In truth, I had probably come to take my good grades for granted. Even though I got A-stars and As, my final PSLE aggregate turned out fifteen points short of the numbers that had danced in my daydreams. I sulked for a whole month afterwards.
I recall my Primary Six form mistress, a wonderful, brilliant woman named Agnes, with a stern countenance and eyes that twinkled with good humour. Once, as we were preparing for the examinations, she asked us, ‘Why should you do well for your PSLE?’
The children began giving her precocious answers such as, “It’s for our future” and “So we can get good jobs”.
‘Wrong,’ she scoffed. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, you’re too young to be thinking about getting a job. You’re going to do well for your PSLE so that you can get into a good secondary school.’
And that was that.
I did as she said, and got into one of the top ten secondary schools. After that, I went on to one of the top five junior colleges.
One of the results of my education being disrupted and my brother’s autism was that I became fascinated with epistemology and psychology, and the anomalies of the human mind. So even when I was away from formal education, I never left my books and pencils and I never let my dictionary out of my sight. When I began studying Japanese as a third language, one of the words I grew extremely attached to was dokugaku, meaning “self-study”.
Given my past aspirations, and the fact that I had gotten along on my own without teachers for quite some time, I surprised even myself when I became a preschool teacher.
I have been asked, “You teach children. So how do you teach your brother?”
Teaching my brother has never come naturally to me. I knew how to read to him, play with him, and I knew the things he liked and those that made him happy. It had not occurred to me that there was anything else to it.
My mother tutored him like an ordinary child. There were no flash-cards or rhythmic routines. We had not known much about such things then. However Jan responded to her lessons, and so things went well.
As for me, I have never gone, ‘Jan, this is a dog. It goes rarf.’
It is strange. My parents would always point out that as children, Jan was the one more interested in his surroundings. During a car ride, he would press his nose to the window glass and watch the scenery. I would be a dozing heap in a corner of the backseat. He liked watching crowds of busy people, too, whenever he had the chance. Jan loved the hustle and bustle and brisk activity. I, confronted with the same sights, would again fall asleep.
My mum would go, ‘Look Jan, a bird flying!’ or ‘Look at that cat!’ or ‘See how green the trees are!’ And Jan would look and observe.
My brother can make for quite the diligent scholar when he is in the mood. Jan likes books and stories, and I think he would be a great reader if he could. He is also bilingual – he speaks two languages and even understands some Japanese. This last is a mystery as I have never taught it to him.
I recall this gangly youth, one of Jan’s former schoolmates, who could not speak and and would stay very still. You could not know anything about him just by watching him sitting ever so silently by himself. Sometimes, in the school van, he would venture to lay his head on his mother’s lap, solemn and unmoved by anything. I had remarked about this to my mother.
‘Sometimes he is quiet,’ said she. ‘But his mother said that he can have the most fantastic meltdowns, all elbows and knees on the floor. That is not all. He can also cook very well.’
‘Cook?’
‘His father is a chef,’ my mother explained. ‘He taught Wei Hong how to cook.’
‘Wei Hong can cook by himself?’ I was amazed.
‘He can prepare simple dishes,’ said my mother. ‘And he is still learning. He likes to learn to cook. It is the only thing that he ever shows any interest in.’
Teach Jan, my mother would tell me, teach him anything you like. But I always draw a blank. I suppose I am used to thinking of him as my teacher and not the other way round, as there are many fantastic things he comes up with. What is more, Jan is bossy. He would rather teach than be taught.
‘Just try,’ my mother would say. ‘There are stories of people with autism who draw and paint, and have their work sold for millions of dollars. That would be something. If he does not make millions of dollars, learning something new would at least make him happy.’
I had taught Jan how to rollerblade years ago. It would actually be unfair for me to take much credit. He had gotten up on the in-line skates by himself and I had barely spoken two words before he was skating all over the place with glee.
I had less success teaching him to ride a bicycle. He had been offended when the bicycle would not cooperate with him, refusing to stand upright while he was trying to get on it. Jan had also taken a bad fall once on his training bicycle, which brought the curtains down on that idea for good.
My most recent venture was trying to teach him to play the keyboard. Jan used to own a toy one when he was younger, and had spent much time tinkering away on it. It is an interesting project as I can play neither keyboards nor pianos. But we managed by following the preset musical arrangements, with the aid of the little screen showing you which keys to
