My email to SY

This mail was sent as a reply to SY for sharing some info on efforts made by other Chinese school on preserving their school culture and most imptly, their school song.

The many efforts made by the school are indeed commendable and clearly demonstrated the desire to preserve as much of their legacy as possible.

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Hi Siyuan,

Thanks for sharing this.

Considering AHS has a similar Chinese background and deep roots in Chinese culture, the efforts made by XXXXX to preserve their school history and culture are indeed commendable.

I am sure much thought was put into the process of incorporating the school history into the syllabus and I wonder if the same amount of efforts was made by AHS to preserve the school's history, in its entirety.

There was an article in Zaobao in Jun that was focused mainly on Hassan having served the school for 48 years. And it was mentioned that the school has published a book of AHS' history and it will be taught to all Sec One students.

I saw this article shortly after discovering the school song change and it is such an irony that we have forsake our school song of more than 45 years when we claim to value our heritage. Surely the school song is an important part of our heritage?

And since it is a book on school history, I am assuming that the changes made to the school song should be properly documented in the book. I have not seen the book for myself but I will verify this.

Baohuan and I have discussed this topic at length, in fact almost daily over the past few weeks. And just to update everyone, we are carrying out or are planning the following course of actions. Incidentally, some of the action items are similar to XXXXX.

• Baohuan is drafting a formal request to the school for the reinstatement of the original school song
  
• Baohuan is researching the school song and working on translating the meaning to simplified Chinese. AHS can use this while teaching the school history to students. I believe that this is one of the best gift that an ex-student can present to the school for its golden jubilee. Since we were told that most students and even teachers do not understand the original school song, this is good learning for the teachers and even the Principal too.
  
• We are planning to submit the petition personally next week to the Principal
  
• We are searching for the person who wrote the original school song as making changes is such an insult to this person's work.

Starting the petition was in no way a rash & impulsive decision. It was hard for us to sit around and do nothing while we waited for more than a week for the VP to revert to us on our enquiry on the circumstances around the school song change. But we wanted to give the school a chance to explain the changes to us.

When the reply finally came, it was brief and disappointing to say the least. Perhaps the school did not feel that they need to account to ex students about their decision.

That reinforced my decision to go ahead with the petition for ex students to have an avenue to express their support for our cause to reinstate the original school song we have known and sung for more than 45 years.

For the initial days following the start of the petition, the signatures were coming in slowly and I wondered if the number of people who feel strongly about the change and care enough about AHS is indeed so little.

However, over the past few days, the number of signatures and comments left have been most encouraging. I am especially glad to see so many unfamiliar names, many from recent batches of students, expressing their concern for the school.

The petition has not only served its purpose of informing ex students about the changes made to the school song, it has also brought so many cohorts of ex students together (spanning across 20 years! ) to be united in our appeal to the school to reconsider this decision.


Warmest Regards
Liv ( Fengjuan of 4A/1994 )