Given the subject matter, there are a great many opinions expressed by all quarters, teachers, parents and students alike.
For Susan Leong though, the debate matters much to her, as she is a Jawi-literate teacher despite her ethnicity.
A skill that she acquired at a young age, she shares it with her sisters and even at the age of 56, she still correctly remembers all 28 Jawi letters which she regularly scrawls into her notebook.
Speaking to FMT, the teacher with 32 years of experience explained that it was not her who decided to learn Jawi, but rather her parents’ decision to ensure that she did.
“At that time, we were living in Kelantan and there was news that the romanised script was going to be replaced by Jawi. So, my mother panicked and feared that we wouldn’t be able to read.”
Acting quickly, Leong’s father sent her and her four sisters to an ustaz who was a workplace acquaintance of his.
All five were still of primary school age when they were given Jawi lessons by the ustaz.
The ustaz taught the Quran for some side income, but for Leong and her sisters, all non-Muslims, he was more than willing to accommodate them.
“He would place us all at a table and he would teach us to write out the Jawi alphabet. His Muslim students meanwhile, would sit on the floor, studying the Quran.”
Leong is adamant that there was no feeling of awkwardness during those classes, since everyone was engrossed in their work.
For the next five years, Leong continued her lessons, and to her own surprise, she actually liked what she was doing.
“It was fun, because it was a form of art for me,” she says. “I like art, I like drawing, and Jawi just felt like another form of art to me.”
On a side note, having to attend Jawi classes meant she was free from having to do house chores for the time being, a fact she appreciated much back then.
“If I just sat at home, my mother would have asked me to do this, do that. And then she sent me to tuition where it was much more fun.”
It also helped that the ustaz was an amicable teacher, easy-going and light-hearted with Leong and her sisters.
The man had a number of fruit trees around his home and he frequently plucked ripe fruits to gift his students. “He knew how to win our hearts.”
“It’s nothing more than an additional skill,” she says about the teaching of Jawi in schools today. “I feel grateful for my knowledge of Jawi.”
Besides her fluency in Cantonese and Mandarin, she uses Jawi to surprise people on occasion, and it is always entertaining to see people’s reaction to her Jawi fluency.
“There was a time I was teaching in a primary school in Petaling Jaya. I was called to relieve the class of an ustaz who was on sick leave.”
“The class was a riot, and they refused to stop the ruckus. I then picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in Jawi on the board, ‘Please keep quiet or I will cane you’.”
The reaction was an immediate silence, she said, and the curious students asked if she could read Jawi.
To which she replied, “I can do that and a lot more.” One final threat of making them study Jawi was enough to silence the class.
Rather comically, from then onwards, whenever the students encountered her in the corridor, they would greet her with the title of “ustazah”.
Her knowledge of Jawi was also helpful when she visited schools in rural areas which heavily used Jawi in their signages.
Leong has no regrets about learning Jawi, and she thinks that if one is willing to learn other languages like Japanese, they should be equally willing to learn Jawi.
It is not only Jawi that she learnt, but also Islamic education which she studied up to standard two.
She scored well in it and enjoyed learning the many Quranic stories she was taught during her lessons.
To this day, she still impresses her students with her knowledge of Jawi and Islam, which leaves her with a little additional skill that few among her colleagues have.
“Learning a new skill is something that we should all be open to. Don’t look at it any other way. Just take it as an additional skill.”