Thank you, dad: The writer posing with her parents after casting their votes in the last general election.
PARENTS play a vital role in instilling values, a love for books and a thirst for knowledge in their children.
If we want to see our young embrace lifelong learning and if we want our future leaders to be learned and cultured citizens of the world, we must ensure equity and equality in education.
It is worrying that less than 50% of our students achieved the minimum level (Level 2) for the reading domain in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2022, with the nation scoring 388, down 27 points from 415 in 2018.
However, we cannot simply leave it to the teachers, schools and learning institutions to cultivate a reading habit. It has to start at home and from a young age.
Admittedly, not every child is fortunate to have access to quality reading materials. But in this digital age, the need to encourage the reading habit and instil good values cannot be emphasised enough.
This is where parents come in. My late father, Lee Wai Yean, was a great man and I am blessed beyond measure to be his daughter.
Those who knew him described him as principled, strict, learned and philosophical – a gentleman and gentle man, as his grandson-in-law put it succinctly.
I learnt at a very young age the meaning of humanity when I saw how he and my mum provided food, shelter and refuge to a security guard during the May 13 incident in 1969.
His complete devotion to his wife of more than 70 years epitomises what true love is about. At 99, mum has dementia and until his recent passing, he single-handedly cared for her.
Hale and hearty at 95, he left us all too suddenly on July 10, a day after a fall. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and went into a coma before slipping away from us.
Dad was from Hong Kong, hence his immaculate Cantonese and also why I call him “lo dau”. He worked with a publishing house and, together with his family, migrated to Singapore, where I was born. He was later sent to Kuala Lumpur to set up the then Malaya Book Company.
In those days, Malaya and Singapore were the same country and when commuting got tough on his little family, mum and I joined him in Kuala Lumpur – now our permanent home.
We are now proud Malaysians, having embraced the citizenship of our adopted country.
In the 1960s, dad left the company to set up Glory Press, his own publishing house. He also set up a bookstore for my mum. He was like a man possessed, launching himself into writing series upon volumes of short stories for children, and having them translated from Chinese to Bahasa Malaysia and English.
All his tales had a moral lesson imbued, and I was tasked with writing up the English version of his stories. It didn’t matter if my translations were not perfect but they had to be appealing and easy to read, with a good moral lesson at the end – those were his instructions and it was hard to do.
I had to write for very young readers, so no sentences beyond 10 words in length and no “bombastic English”. But the really hard part, until I learnt to appreciate its significance, was the travelling.
We would traverse all over the country, setting up stalls in hot school canteens and exhibition booths to sell the “cheap books” he’d written.
The books sold for between 10 and 20 sen and we’d earn a few hundred ringgit – a huge portion of which he would then donate to the schools. I couldn’t fathom the logic until much later.
Dad printed each book himself, either in black and white or with three-colour printing – sometimes in newsprint – to keep the cost down so that as many children as possible could afford to buy books to read, keep, share and give away.
He wanted to promote a love for reading and didn’t wish to deprive children of the opportunity to afford quality books with good moral values.
A man filled with passion and zeal, he was determined to spread a love for books everywhere he went.
Dad was the co-founder of the Selangor & KL Stationers & Booksellers Association, an active association to this day. A great advocate for culture, literature and lifelong learning, he wanted children to understand the value and importance of reading.
He learnt to use technology to pay his taxes and bills and was picking up Korean so that he could communicate with our goddaughter and friends.
That’s the legacy he left us and it is also the reason why I am so passionate about education and continuing his life’s work, generosity and thirst for knowledge.
One of my former students said this of him, “A good heart has stopped beating, but a heart that has touched so many lives can’t help but live on in those it loved.”
Indeed, I’m reminded that “those we love don’t go away; they walk beside us in our hearts and memories”.
Prof Datuk Dr Elizabeth Lee is the group chief executive officer at Sunway Education. A veteran in the field of private higher education, Prof Lee is also an advocate for women in leadership. She has been recognised both locally and internationally for her contributions to the field of education. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
