PL: ‘To teach the Japanese language, wow!

LKA: ‘From locals- to locals. They trained us and a few were selected. The better ones, as guess, to teach to help them to teach.'
PL: ‘How much were you paid?’
LKA: ‘Oh I cannot recall. It was very nominal because it was only two hours a day. But it was something to do and interesting in the sense that…'
PL: ‘That's quite cool for a boy of 16.’
LKA: ‘So that was interesting thing. Then I had other sideline other jobs because it's only teaching about two hours. I was an interpreter over there part time for all these Chinese businessmen who wanted to do business with the Japanese.’

   

RM : There were the most common games that were (played) in school. The other game that was played quite a bit…was ‘chap teh’. It was a game which had quite a number pieces of hard paper with a leather on the bottom and a leather on top…And what one had to do with this ‘chap teh’ was… to kick this with your feet…sometimes it was quite a long game and it took the whole recess hour and was to be continued the day after or the evening after school.

TBL : Were you given time to take a bath and do some…say
games?

PH : Oh yes, yes, we do, yea, we do have the time if we want to play any game. But most of the games we play, we play ‘kendo’ (fencing) and sometimes I just cannot take ‘kendo’ with the Japanese because they are very fast with the bamboo sword. You have to cover your head and then you got the metal piece on your face. But they are faster, sometimes I feel very hard to breath(e) because the way he hit you. We learn about that one.

TBL : When did you play the games?

PH : Well, evening time after the vehicle cleaning and so on, and of course that is the only time, on Saturday or Sunday. Because that time we are confined in barracks, we are not allowed to go anywhere. So that’s what we did.

The main health issues of school children reported in 1921 were dental cavities, visual defects, anaemia and malnutrition. Tooth decay was the most common health issue detected, affecting 84 percent of school children. This led to an investment in toothbrushes for students and daily tooth-brushing drills. While a decrease in dental cavities was reported in years that followed, many children were still affected due to the lack of dental facilities. In 1947, the school dental service was established to handle the dental health of school children, with the appointment of the first dental officer for schools in 1954.

Locals still hold the conservative view that women should be illiterate, hence, carriages had to be arranged for the girls to be ferried between the school and their homes tin order to avoid public scrutiny, as a result the community did not extend their support for the school, causing it to struggle through its formative years. Subjects learned at SCGS are Chinese, Romanised Malay, Arithmetic, Geography, Sewing and Physical Education.                                    

YGL: “What did they do for PE lessons?”                          
TSK: “Well, we go through a syllabus. There’s a book called syllabus with a timetable. As a teacher, we learn the syllabus. We follow the things off… the plan of speed, we do follow –ups, arming ups and then we’ll do exercises, and then agility exercises and then games and this is it?”                                
YGL: “Games. What games did the Pre-war girls play?”          
TSK: “As I said, we had a thing called captains ball.”                                

LCS: “We had like… PE, the commands were given in Japanese. We had right turn, attention and things like that, stand at ease, in Japanese. The songs were in Japanese too.”

 

LCS: “We had PT which is Physical Training. We had a bit of gardening, some arithmetic. But there was no History or Geography.