After getting your scholarship do you give back enough to society?
Monday Starters - By Soo Ewe Jin
WHEN I first stepped into the hallowed school hall of the oldest school in the country back in 1972, the first thing that crossed my mind was how big it is compared to my primary school in Jelutong.
Over the years, as I began to appreciate the Penang Free School’s traditions and history, I also realised that an institution’s legacy is not so much in its physical structures but in the people who are part of it.
In the school hall, there are three plaques. One showed the list of headmasters stretching all the way back to 1816. A second showed the head prefects. The third plaque listed down all the queen’s scholars that the school had produced.
Among the names there were the legendary Plague Fighter Dr Wu Lien Teh, who incidentally also had one of the school houses named after him, and Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu, who passed away on Nov 24 and was deservedly accorded a state funeral yesterday.
I had entered the school at the time when Dr Lim was three years into office as chief minister of Penang, so it was natural that I recognised his name. The most famous Old Frees then were definitely Dr Lim and the Tunku, who by then had stepped down as prime minister.
In recent days, there had been some confusion over whether Dr Lim was a queen’s scholar or a king’s scholar.
So I did some quick research to understand the history of the Queen’s scholarship.
Named in honour of Queen Victoria, the scholarships were inaugurated in 1885 in the Straits Settlements by the then governor, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith.
There were two objectives for the scholarship: Firstly, to allow promising boys an opportunity to complete their studies in England and, secondly, to encourage a number of boys to remain in school and acquire a really useful education.
There was no university in the Straits Settlements nor the Malay states at that time and many families could hardly afford to send their children to school let alone to England for a university education.
Over the weekend, I also dusted out the old school magazines for the seven years I was at PFS and reread the four-page interview with Dr Lim published in the 1977 edition.
In a candid interview, Dr Lim shared how he took the special examination to qualify even though he was still, at that age, too young to enter university.
A queen’s scholar he did become and he set sail for England in 1937 and returned in 1944 a trained medical doctor.
The late Lord President, Tun Suffian Hashim, was the first Malay queen’s scholar in 1936. The queen’s scholar before Dr Lim was Prof Tan Sri Ahmad Ibrahim, a legal giant who became Singapore’s first Attorney General. And the one after him was former Bank Negara governor Tun Ismail Ali.
Malaysia is indeed blessed to have these queen’s scholars because they came back and served the country. It was not so much about which school they originated from, but the legacy they passed on because they were given this opportunity to study abroad and broaden their horizons.
As I perused a list compiled by a former student of the Victoria’s Institution (like PFS, this school had a good number of queen’s scholars), it became clear that these outstanding scholars from all races were all powerful agents of change for our fledgling country.
As I reflect on the present state of how we give out scholarships, I cannot but feel that the word scholarship no longer carries the same meaning as it used to. Apart from the sheer numbers, we also struggle over how we want to bring them back, or how other countries are benefiting from our best brains.
I feel, however, that this debate is pointless. The bigger issue is how Malaysians can contribute to a lasting legacy that not only impacts the country, but also humanity. For what we receive, how do we in turn give back to society? For how we are blessed, how do we in turn bless others?
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