I studied at Bukit Ho Swee East Primary (BHSEPS) at Jalan Bukit Ho Swee from 1964 to 1968.
BHSEPS is an English stream school. Further into the same ground is Bukit Ho Swee West Primary School (BHSWPS) which is Chinese stream.
Both schools share a common canteen but each has its own exit and car park. Students from the West school enter or exit through a small entrance facing Havelock Road while students from the East school use the entrance along Jalan Bukit Ho Swee. However, all cars entering into the compound have to pass through the East school’s entrance.
BHSEPS is a 4 storey H-shaped building and the wings are connected by the toilets in between and the flag pole marks the divide at the ground level. Every morning, during the flag raising ceremony, we would fantasize and watch out for scary movements from the toilet, and then gossip among ourselves about our imaginations.
It’s really fun to be in school. For example, we love to crawl in and out of the class from the dividing wall into the corridor when the teachers are not looking. We would run to the toilet and back again or crawl into another class to meet our friends. During recess, we play Catching or Police-and-thief games with our schoolmates. Some times when we were dashing around, we tend to miss our steps and fall into the drains. I fell into the drain once. I was quite badly injured, and the teachers had to send me to a clinic for stitching. The scars from the stitches remain on my forehead until now.
Shoes are seldom washed as our parents were too busy or worried that they get worn off earlier than two years, and faster than they could afford to buy another pair. But the teachers insisted that our shoes must be white. So, we will use the left-over chalks to draw on our shoes or dust them with the classroom’s blackboard duster before class starts.
As children, we are often up to our mischief. When we do not pay attention or become too talkative in class, the teacher will make us stand up on our chair, and pull our ears throughout the lesson. Some teachers even punish the students by patting the chalk board duster on his face, and the entire class will laugh.
If we do not pass-up home work punctually, we have to stay back during recess to do the work. But most of us would rather be copy-cats than missed our recess time games.
Stealing of stationery or money is common as many of us come from poor families. The school views theft as a serious offence. The teachers will beat the student with a ruler on the hand and ask her/him to write 100 lines of “I must not steal” or “I must not tell lies”.
However, we get rewarded by teachers for good performance too! At the end of each academic year, the teachers acknowledge our progress by giving us small items such as erasers. The monitors and prefects will get bigger items such as those lovely pencil cases from Shing Lee Book Shop [Bookstore?] or Pacific Bookstore [Bookshop?] at Havelock Road. Our teachers knew that we do not like the ones from the school’s bookshop. I am a proud owner of 3 beautiful pencil cases!
We also reward ourselves at school. I remember there was a uniformed patrol-warden who helps students cross the single-lane 2-way road in front of the entrance. Just right across the road is the welcoming ice-balls stall! This pull-cart stall sells ice balls for 10 cents each. But most students share ice balls, and the uncle is most willing to cut it into half for us. He sells pineapple drinks too. For 10 cents, we get five slices of pineapple and 2 cubes of ice in each plastic bag of pineapple juice. Once in a while, we will buy both items to reward ourselves after a hard day’s work at school.
How I miss my good old school days!
