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Student who smoked forced to leave
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Mon, Jan 05, 2009
New Straits Times
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>IPOH, MALAYSIA - A few months before M. Reuben was to sit the Penilaian Menengah Rendah examination, his father caught him smoking with a friend. As "punishment" his father pulled him out of school. The 15-year-old didn't sit the PMR, and he has no problems with that.
"I'm not disappointed. I consider myself lucky. I would have failed the examination anyway, just as I did the UPSR (Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah)," he laconically told the New Straits Times.
Reuben is neither studying nor working now. He is content just to hang out at home.
"I'll find a job if I have to. But I can't get a job because I have no skills. I can't go to school either, because I'm a weak student."
His parents, both unemployed, did not allow him to leave the house for fear that he would get involved in drugs, he said.
Era Community Centre counsellor L. Gunasegaran said Reuben was one out of about 400 youths receiving counselling at the centre after deciding to quit school.
The centre tries to motivate them to go back to school and complete their education. It also tries to help those who do not have documentation.
"They give various reasons for dropping out, such as the lack of parental support and difficulty in adjusting to a secondary school after studying in a Tamil school," he said.
Counsellor Nanthini Ramaloo from the centre's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur said almost half of the school dropouts in the country were Indian youths who left after the PMR examination.
"There are books to buy, notes to photocopy and class trips to attend at school. When they can't afford it, they just leave school."
More than half turn to crime when they can't find jobs, which worsens their problem if they get a criminal record, she said.
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