26. BACK TO SCHOOL..............

....in BATA shoes! This was a favourite refrain in the old days. Just before school reopens for the new term, this shoe manufacturer will have the same old ad in the papers. Parents and their kids will troop down to the shoe shop to pick up their new pair of white canvas rubber soled shoes, for everybody wore the same style as part of their school uniform. The girls had their ballerina flats and the boys, lace-ups called Badminton Master. It was a big thing for the whole family and there was much excitement on this outing.

I found myself back in school this month, this time as a teacher assisting the head teacher in an ESL class at an international school for foreign students. My students are teenagers from China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. They came to learn English from native speakers of the language. Many are left with guardians.

Their families are well-to-do for it costs a tidy sum to attend an international school in Singapore and to pay the guardian to keep an eye on them. Most of my kids have just arrived for the new academic year and one of the first things they did was to turn their dark hair blond, add colourful streaks, equip themselves with bags and shoes bearing cool youthful labels from surf shops which these youngsters love. They try to look with it with their spiky coloured hair, leather wrist bands, rubber bangles and metal studs.

My kids from China and Taiwan have adopted English first names! They've 'misplaced' their spectacles and have switched to coloured contact lenses. One just had a hair extension added!

They struggle with pronunciation and intonation. Some days they rest their heads on their desks and fall asleep. They text on their mobiles during class. If we were'nt firm enough, they would be on their laptops playing games. After 3 warnings, it's detention for an hour after school. They're smart kids but at an age when they are'nt too enthusiastic about school.

Once away from the confines of home and family and their society, the kids savour real freedom. They express this through colourful hair, weird hairdos, pierced ears. I'm quite sure, by the time the 2nd semester comes around, I would see more pierced body parts and possibly their 1st tattoo. What started as a show of rebellion or individuality has now become conformist everywhere.

The nicest thing I see is, the boys from Taiwan and China are buddies. The girls from Japan and Korea chat and joke in fractured English - they get along so well. Away from their home countries, they are not caught up in the games their politicians and local media play to keep themselves in business. Their rhetoric has always been to play on the emotions of the masses. 

Looking at the kids in a large group at recess, I can't tell them apart, they might as well be just one nationality. Far as I'm concerned, they're citizens of the world.

My exhausted kids during a field trip.

'Let there be moments unexplainable. Let there be a few things that are mysterious, for which you cannot supply any reason. Let there be a few doings for which people will think you are a little crazy' - Osho