Pon, The Plain Teacher

It must have been history laid before my eyes today when I got together with a couple of my old friends after having lost contacts for over 30 years. It was an unplanned meeting to make it more interesting and I hosted them not a the hospitality of my own home but at a nasi kandar shop. That's very unpleasant of me. Yet, it is good though as I managed to gather some time on my own, a little bit away from home, to recollect the 17 year old inside me.
I met Pon and An. Those were the nicknames that meant dearly to all of us, the 1977-1981 batch.
Pon is a teacher, and an excellent one while An runs a restaurant in KL. Pon, above all is the most talkative as he has always been since school days while An interjects from time to time with his many charms. I've been a very good listener.
We sat, drinks after drinks and raced to bring back all those memories. Those fond memories rejuvinated our souls as we silently searched the 17 year old in each of us. Guess what, it didn't take that long to discover that little devil. It soon came out from the hiding of all pretense, giggling. It was a lot of fun to be able to do that.
I managed to tap plenty out from Pon as I steered the conversation into his teaching line. Most of us went abroad to further studies while Pon stayed behind to enter one of the local U's. Out of that and his experience, he is very much up to date in his techniques of teaching and it seems that he is the sole believer among other teachers that I knew of, who religiouly embraced IT to make it a tool in education. I saluted him for that.
In the bird's eye view, I asked him the reason's for the lacking of 'drive' to excel among kids these days. His answers interest me most especially when he said that the kids simply do not know what they do not know. It's a bull-eye shot which tells me as a teacher, Pon deeply understand almost the entire chemistry of a student's psychology. He added that too much entertainment laid around our kids had sort of diluted the whole goal of getting better results. And most parents simply are not able to pin-point that so to ensure they introduce some form of balance between play and study.
Right at that very minute, I knew I had something to write about. I wanted to make him my guess writer, yet the time was not quite suitable. I do hope he would accept such offer that will in turn add a little more spice to my bland blog. Afterall kids and education are among the hidden themes of my writings.
To Pon, a great friend, a plain teacher stands out the most these days. Just like a 'plain man'.