Singapore in the 1980s , the Road Safety Park and an apology to Ramesh.

Back in the 1980s a very common school excursion for primary school kids in Singapore was a trip to the Road Safety Park(RSP). This school trip brought the kids to the purpose built “park” that taught kids about “road safety”. The point of the excursion was to go walk/drive/ride around the park going through different check points for different activities while obeying traffic rules and getting timeouts at the traffic police when the rules were broken. You know, like life. Also very singapore.

It was amazing! It had mini sized everything. The place had mini overhead bridges! Traffic Lights! Zebra crossings! pedestrian walkways, turning lanes, filter lanes, Shell petrol Stations and all other types of fun transport features in Singapore! And in case the children forget about the bureaucracy that manages the Singapore roads, there was the Traffic police and Vehicle inspection station too. It was all kind of awesome for a Singaporean kid.

Part of the excietment started when the the kids were assigned to become different types of road users. The road users were represented as follows: pedal-powered gokarts instead of cars, bicycles instead of motorbikes and finally, pedestrians. The most popular option among primary-school aged kids was the Pedal gokart, followed by the bicycle. Nobody wanted to be a pedestrian, it just involved walking around the park. We weren’t allowed to run. Running/Speeding meant you had to go to the traffic police. Meh.

Of course there was a limited number of pedal karts and bicycles. There were considerably more bicycles than gokarts but most of the kids ended up being pedestrian. I guess all of this mirrored society somehow?

Anyway, the school teacher had the job of assigning the cars and bicycles to the students. The allocations were all done before we got on the bus for the park. My primary school teacher decided that the best way to allocate them was to assign them by race!!! ie make sure that the number of gokarts and bicycles were allocated to the students according to the the racial mix of Singapore. 10% of the gokarts/bicycles went to Indian students, 15% to the Malay and the rest to the Chinese. Mine was neigborhood school in the 80s so there were no “Others” to think of. This seemed fair to me at the time when the teacher explained it. Keeping within the racial quotas, the bikes and karts were randomly assigned. I did not get one of the 3 Indian gokarts. I was dissapointed, I did not get bicycle either. I was crushed. It did not seem unfair now. Walking around was not my thing.

I really really wanted the gokart. So on the bus ride over i came up with a plan to get a gokart. I started asking around till I found a kid who didn’t want to ride a bike. He did not know how to ride and was afraid of getting on one. I swapped my pedestrian allocation for his bike. Then I found a kid who said he always to ride a bike but was convinced his parents would never get him one and this was his chance to ride bikes! Bingo! I had traded up to a gokart! woo!

We get off the bus at the RSP.

Teacher tells us to get into lines to get our gokarts and bicycles. I am standing in line for the Gokart feeling pretty pleased with myself. The teacher walks up and says something to the effect of “i thought Indians only get 3 cars? why is there 4? Who is not supposed to be here?”. I stepped up immediately and animatedly explained to her (what I thought was) my brilliant way of trading up to a gokart. She didn’t buy it. I must have tried explaining more. She really did not like that. She insisted that is not how the school wanted it done.

So, she gathers the Indian gokart kids and tries to make us settle this ourselves. I insisted I keep mine. I was also insistent I should not have to swap with an Indian car because I had already done it on the bus with someone else and had kept within the rules she had set earlier. She finally relented to me having a gokart but she ended up taking a gokart away from my best friend, Ramesh. She made him take my place as pedestrian. The Indian allocation of cars remained at 3.

I don’t remember how she dealt with other (Chinese) kids I swapped with.

I got mine. And that’s all that mattered to my 11 year old self.

I don’t remember much from primary school, but I do remember that excursion day, the exciting trade-ups, the thrill of getting closer to what I really really wanted, the smug precociusness of explaining myself to the teacher and the self righteous way I insisted I get the gokart. But that memory always ends with images of pedaling around the RSP and feeling shame/regret everytime I came across my friend walking around the park (until I pedaled around the corner. weeee!) Our primary-school-best-friend status was definitely affected by this. Sorry Ramesh. I still wince at myself for that day.

I think the other Indian kids thought I was kind of a dick too.

I spent alot of time unpacking that memory over the years. I look back with regret that I wasn’t empathetic to my best friend’s experience and not being the bigger person, even though we were 10–11 and this was a pretty messed up situation through no fault of our own. What was the teacher thinking?

I had mostly relegated it to a purely anecdotal experience from 35 years ago when I was a kid and not really symbolic or representative of anything larger. Then I read this last month.