Culture

I am not talking about how cultured we all should be. Nor am I talking about milk culture ... Vitagen or Yakult kind of thing. I am talking about school culture. Specifically the school spirit. The last two years I have been mourning the death of the school culture / school spirit among students. There is little pride in the school among most of my students. Yes, they cheer and and shout when the school team does well in a competition. That's as far as the school spirit goes. They do not think that they are part of the school spirit, contributors of the school pride and feel that sense of belonging to the sisterhood of SMKPSA. Why do I suddenly go into this? The last few weeks have been a series of disappointments to me. I see how a lot of students do not bother and care about integrity. A lot of them have the kind of apathy that we all do not hope to see in the future generation. Every time a question is asked of them if they would like to be part of something organised by the school, the kind of answers I get are "What for?, Why?, Lazy-lah, My parents don't let"! What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing and everything. Nothing because some things ARE beyond your control. But the answers also show how interested and enthusiatic you are (NOT) in the programmes. Let me give examples :

The Monsoon Cup performances - This is one very disappointing topic. We were approached to perform for the Opening and Closing of the event. Also to cheer the teams that were competing. It would have pretty much paid for all the Cheer 2009 expenses. A total of up to RM8500 would have changed hands and not to mention the exposure the girls would have. Plus a PAID holiday in Terengganu for a week. Even if we were to go for only the Opening or only the Closing, we would have been paid about half of that. A very big sigh here. The money could have been used for various things, not just cheer uniform and coaching. Could have used the money for Cheer Jam!

Conditioning Camp - It is sad that only 11 students turned up. The school paid for everything, from instructors to food to VCDs. There were so many who just brushed off the camp. None of my cheer girls went, none of my QMs went to help. None of the girls who had potential in athletics went. The only ones who were there were a few netball girls and a few softball girls.

Cheer Jam - I just found out today about this event called Cheer Jam. No one bothered to tell me about it. How many are going? I don't know.

The post-PMR trips - Many signed up ealry, How many went? Everything is on a hangat-hangat tahi ayam spirit. I was disappointed with the way things were going.

These are just some examples. There are more. I wonder why there is so little pride in the school among the students, and among the parents. It would be nice to have a few more parents who actually become involved in part of the school programmes. We could do with a few more Mr Madis.