Learning Experience – My Humble Beginning
I was born to impecuniousparents. We are six daughters and one brother. I am the fourth one. We lived in a wooden house with zinc roof and cement floor. My mother was a rubber tapper cum cleaner and my father was a lorry driver in Sabah. Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my father had always worked far from us. My father came back once in a year during Chinese New Year. Due to our tightened financial condition, since primary school, my siblings and I started to earn our living through providing house cleaning services after school and helping my mother in rubber estate every weekend.
My mother is the most honest, hardworking, bright and caring person I know. Undeniably,my mother has had the most influence on me. According to Bandura’s (1977a) Social Cognitive Theory, my behaviour is learned from the environmental through the process of observational learning. Throughout my upbringing, I pay attention to my mother and encode her behaviour. My mother is my most influential model and I really imitate her behaviour most of the time. This is consistent with the famous Bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1961). For example, I always eat all of the food on my plate like my mother. Food is precious and is not something to be wasted. Being a poor kid knows exactly how much everything costs.
Though my mother is not highly educated, schooling less than four years, but I learn her diligent, her knack for learning, her passion and her values. She helps to instil my mentality of “no one is going to help me, I must help myself.”What I observe from her is good luck happens when I work hard and eventually my hard work pays off. Hard work is something we are all capable of. I am proud of how smart she is and the intelligence she gives me. Also, I respect my mother for her wisdom of knowing that “do as I say not as I do” will not work. I feel like she has shaped who I am now. This is true that girls are more likely to imitate behaviour modelled by someone of the same sex (Bandura, 1977a). In addition, I realize that I continue to work hard which I imitate from my mother’s diligent through reinforcement. My mother’s smile and her peace of mind of not worrying about money are my rewards and trigger me to repeat my hardship in order to make our life better. Indeed, children are natural mimics who act like their parents.
Of course, my parents are like other typical parents who have long known that children respond to rewards and punishments. They like to use “traditional” punishments such as slapping, spanking and scolding for our misbehaviour. This is aligned with Skinner’s (1953) theory of operant conditioning that behaviour is affected by its consequences. We have many personal experiences of negative consequences from disobeying and keeping us from acting in certain ways in future. I still can remember vividly the every occasional spanking that my siblings and I received. My mother used to discipline us severely with rods, whips, belts and hangers if we did something very wrong. But I know she loves us and she always teaches us right from wrong!
There was one incident that all my siblings and I were punished badly because I was caught food stealing at the age of five. One day, my neighbour needed my mother’s help to take care of a baby for a night. She passed my mother a small container of baby milk powder and other basic necessities such as clothes, napkin and so forth. We poor children had few food luxuries and ate poor food. Basically, milk powder, Milo or chocolate powder and uncooked instant noodles were considered our luxury snacks. I was caught of finishing the whole container of the milk powder with my young sister. My mother was furious and wanted to spank me badly because the milk powder was costly, especially during our hard time. Fortunately, my brother and sisters helped to receive the spankings and protected me from getting further punishments from my mother. I love my brother and sisters! On the other hand, I have seen how my mother used all sorts of “weapons” to manipulate and control my siblings in order to get instant obedience. No doubt, the theory of Skinner is really a reality applied. It is true that I have the knowledge of what could happen if I misbehave like my siblings. This is the unique human characteristics of being able to benefit from the experiences of others.
Like other economically disadvantaged kids, I had no access to any early childhood education programs, preschool or kindergarten. My “kindergarten” was in rubber estate helping my mother to collect latex from rubber trees before enrolling into a Chinese primary school. I did poorly in primary school, especially in my English and Malay subjects. In fact, poor communities have unfavourable attitude towards the importance of education due to the deficiencies. As such, my less educated parents devalued our education as they were busy earning money to secure our basic needs. Furthermore, my siblings and I had to work after school during day and night time. I am very sad to say that I was never motivated at school. There is no one like “Miss Thompson” who can do a great deal to make a school a meaningful haven for me. Teachers biased against students with poor academic performance and they preferred students who scored well in the class. Also, some of my primary school teachers had “subconscious” bias against poor pupils. Poor children are likely to be accused of stealing by their teachers. Yes, I had a stealing food record when I was five, but I had learned a lesson the hard way. As highlighted by Skinner (1938), the punishment or the consequence helps me avoid making the same mistake again. In primary two, there was one incident where I was blamed for stealing my classmate’s pinafore belt after a sport activity. I was suspected because the belt colour was different from my pinafore. A faded pinafore with a newly bought navy coloured belt! Immediately, I denied the blame firmly. I explained and cried that my old and torn school uniform was passed down from my sisters and the belt was donated by my neighbour. Undeniably, I was labelled as a poor student in school, but not a thief.
Though I was not a smart student, who needed to work as a house cleaner during daytime and a restaurant helper at night time, but I never procrastinated with my school works. When I was in a remove class, I missed a page of my English homework and I was called by the English teacher to write the answers on a chalkboard. Thank you to my English teacher, Madam Mary who boosted my self-esteem and changed my life by embarrassing me in front of the class. The English exercise was to change verbs from present tense to past tense. I felt humiliated standing at the chalkboard helplessly with no answers in my mind. Luckily, one of my classmates, Suhaila, spoke softly to me, “Ai Chin, belakang tambah ed.” This means putting “ed” behind the verbs. I strongly agree that “We learn from failure, not from success!”
Adolescents are very self-conscious, sensitive and very easy to embarrass. I was caught in the sudden headlights of my class notice; therefore, I determined to study hard and move toward a more mature sense of myself. As highlighted by Bandura (1977b), self-efficacy theory is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. The self-efficacy theory focuses on expectancies for success: (a) outcome expectations, and (b) efficacy expectations. I found that my strong sense of self-efficacy plays a major role for continued learning and performance. Particularly, the outcome expectations explain that study hard increases the chances of doing well on tests. I worked hard to improve my English through reading newspapers every day to build my vocabulary. I picked up one word at a time, and searched for the meanings in the dictionary. I also wrote down the words in 555 note book and memorize them. Furthermore, I made a goal of learning at least 10 new words every day. Indeed, every cloud has a silver lining. I was a class leader and selected as a best academic student in school. Also, I did well for my SPM and successfully enrolled in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to further Bachelor of Technology Management for four years.
I continued to score good marks in university and earned a gold medal for my educational excellence during my studies. After graduation, I worked as a material planner in Flextronics Senai Johor for two years and supply chain officer in Philips Singapore for another two years. I was under a lot of pressure and stress from my daily tasks. Slowly, my sense of self-efficacy decreased and I quickly lost confidence in my abilities. I started to avoid challenging tasks and only focused on my personal failings. Earning Singapore dollars did not make me happy and I decided to change my career path completely. I wanted to venture toward a new and happier job like lecturer that could keep my spirits up.
I recalled my past achievements and I realized that my educational excellence is one of the greatest contributors to my confidence. I achieved academic success in the past and I believed that I would be successful in education field in future. The old adage, “Nothing breeds success like success” certainly is true when it comes to developing self-efficacy. I had to maximize opportunities through education. Without much hesitation, I quitted my job and pursued my full time Master Degree in Technology Management. I experienced higher self-efficacy when I was capable to pass my Master degree in flying colours and was offered to be a tutor in UTM. In fact, self-modelling, where I observe myself succeed, is also a powerful influence for the self-efficacy. I have completed my doctoral degree and now I am a senior lecturer in UTM. However, my search for knowledge will never end. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
