Brunei Maktab Sains

Architecture of the office

One of the first things the new Principal did was to rearrange her office so that it was unapproachable. She changed the entrance to be a side door. The front office was rearranged so that it resembled an old style bank with a high platform type counter through which the tiny ‘workers’ could hardly be seen. On this platform was a bell which, as a teacher, one had to press for attention

It was designed to diminish and intimidate the visitor

The teachers hardly knew she was there: but she was there allright!

When we were teaching she would open the door, look in and go out again without saying a word.How rude!  She then had a little square hole cut in each classroom door. Glass was put in each hole so that she could look in while we were teaching.Even more rude!

The gates of the school were closed and teacher’s number plates asked for so that she could keep track of who was entering and leaving the school. 

If we went to the airport we were supposed to get an official at the airport to stamp a form to stay they had seen us at the airport!

Because everyone knew she was unapproachable she had nothing to do at all –a fact which therefore compounded her incompetence as she did absolutely nothing. It was management by default.

The HOD  was almost completely ignored by her and her equally incompetent 'lapdog' the  Deputy Principal. The HODs  were asked to do the dirty work but were kept in the “Mushroom club” for most of the time-i.e. ‘kept in the dark and fed shit’. The HOD of the English department   was a lovely person, but could not stand up to the principal or take up an issue on behalf of her teachers. She also was easily manipulated by some expatriate teachers who ended up getting all the 'easy' classes with very few students in them.

Not surprisingly, this caused resentment amongst the rest of us.

 The Principal gathered around her a coterie of poker-faced attack dogs who carried out her wishes and whims, sometimes unwillingly, but sometimes  with undisguised relish.

These were the one and the same people who in the previous year had been quite pleasant colleagues. Now there were no smiles, no greetings and these stooges patrolled the corridors writing down the names of teachers in the morning who were late for their registration duties.

Teachers who had taught in the school for many years –even ten or more were not fare - welled at any formal function. They just disappeared –often in the middle of the year.

Incompetence

The Deputy Principal saw fit to allocate the Lower sixth classes to non–airconditioned rooms for general paper (G.P. classes). Why? No-one knew, as there were many spare rooms with airconditioning available.

In the first week I moved in to one of them and stayed there for the rest of the year. A serious crime.  No wonder I ended up on the 'veto list'

 
There was one PC for twenty two English teachers in the staffroom and repeated requests for another PC were ignored. PCs did not have access to the internet. Only the computer labs had this and they didn’t work all the time-and were often used by the computer and other academic departments for classes.

Being science teachers neither the Principal,  nor the Deputy had any idea of how labour intensive debating was for teachers. We were not allowed to practice during class time-yet students were out of my class for myriads of other similar activities.

I had to go personally to the previous Principal to get my classes to follow on form year 4 to 5. The GCSE was a two year course. It is  more efficient to take the classes for two years. The Deputy didn’t like this because it was more difficult for her to administer. Perhaps this is why I was put on her ‘veto’ list.?  God only knows

Record Books

This was a huge book which consisted of weekly lesson plans and daily lesson plans, exam marks etc.

It was largely a work of fiction.

Nobody followed the plans

Most people made up the lesson plans and didn’t follow them. Most people also made up the marks . I certainly did. By the end of my time at MS I wasn’t setting any homework because students either copied it, or didn’t do it at all.

The book had to be inspected and signed by the HOD every week and the Deputy Principal every three weeks. The Deputy Principal was a science teacher, as was the second Principal.

Between them they didn’t know the difference between an English lesson and a bar of soap. But that didn’t stop them from writing absurd comments on the book when they didn’t like something such as “where are the homework marks?” when they knew perfectly well what the situation was in reality. The Ministry had some regulation that required teachers to mark one composition and comprehension every two weeks-for over a hundred students! Each grammar mistake was supposed to be corrected in red ink and the student and teacher were supposed to correct them all! Of course no-one ever did this.

My own personal story at MS

My arrival and first two years were very happy at M.S. For the first time in six years I felt relatively valued as a teacher in Brunei. The administration was relatively benign. They were not actively supportive, but passively so.

That was the best you could ask for in Brunei as most administrators were either incapable, incompetent, inexperienced, or all three. Most schools had an environment toxic to professional teachers. But this was not the case in the first two years at M.S. I began to feel enthusiastic about teaching again. For the first time in years I started to think about doing a project which would keep me happy in my spare time. I eventually came up with an Action research project on teacher collaboration. I was able to conceive of, design, implement, evaluate and write-up my project as a thesis for my Educational Doctorate from an online University in the United States.

Staff in the English Department generally cooperated with me but in the end only people who were ‘ free’ could be involved –a design fault but better than no project at all.

I wrote up most of the project at home or at the Seaside Travellers Inn in Kota Kinabalu.

Apart from my thesis the most positive thing that happened was the winning of the Debate competition. This is something that had not happened at the school for eleven years. I certainly got some kudos from the administration for doing this.

Before I arrived at M.S. an interesting event occurred as a result of a visit one day to the school by the Crown Prince. He was a nice enough fellow but regarded as a bit slow. ‘Not quite the full shilling’ as we say in Ireland.

Apparently during his visit he had taken a fancy to one of the sixth form girls. She was a pretty girl.

On his return to the palace his Aids did the needful and within two months they were married.

Now the girl's mother was a Swiss lady who was an employee of CFBT.  She was the counselor and a very good one at that. She kept many teachers from going nuts during periods of stress.  She  became the Queen mother and had to give up her job at cfbt and was not seen in public after the marriage.

 She  had no choice in the matter either. That is the way things are done in Brunei.

Returning to my thesis again, there was no needs analysis in this Orwellian world. It wasn’t necessary because naturally, the administration knew everything that was needed for teachers and students. Communication was nil. It was like travelling on a spaceship on an intergalactic mission with the crew in hibernation and only ‘Hal’ the computer for company.. The Bruneians  complied as usual thus giving tacit consent to their own oppression-and this was why I lost respect for many of them in the end.

They were likeable but I didn’t respect them. They never, ever, stood up for themselves or each other. On the contrary they routinely dobbed each other in order to gain ‘Brownie points’ for themselves at someone else’s expense. 

The truth is this is what humans do, wherever they are: they look after themselves, at the expense of their peers . 

I've even done it myself.