Remember "Ali, Tong Seng, Ah Moi, Ramasamy and Salmah?

All of a sudden, I recalled when I was in Standard 1 way back in 1970,there was a Bahasa Melayu textbook with the main characters namely Ali, Salmah, Tong Seng, Ah Moi, Ramasamy and Kumari. I will tell you why my being so nostalgic later .... Ali and Salmah are siblings so as Tong Seng and Ah Moi as well as Ramasamy and Kumari. The texbook even had pictures of these characters ... Salamah with her long hair and the pony tails and her "baju kurung", Ali wearing a songkok while Ah Moi and Kumari wearing the good old days dark blue uniform ... In the textbook, these multi racial characters went to school together, they play together and had their "adventures" together ... There was an incident of Ramasamy climbing a tree to save a trapped cat but he ended up trapped and could not go down.His friends managed to get help and Ramasamy was saved by the "orang kampung" ..... It's a simple and ideal multi racial story for us in the primary school though I have to state here that 100% of my classmates were Malays .... Well, there's nothing wrong being an idealistic anyway. Each one of us should emulate the traits Ali, Salmah, Tong Seng, Ah Moi, Ramasamy and Kumari - they learn, play and having fun together. By the time, I finished my Form Six there were so many textbooks which I had to "digest" and I would say those textbooks made sense to me ..... The textbooks had somewhat gave me the idea of how to be at least a good and civil member of our society. Fast forward, in 2013 last week I was frowning and frowned hard I was when Tun Mahathir was reportedly as suggesting the 180 pages biography of our PM's wife to be made as a textbook in schools ..... He was quoted as saying the RM150/ (Note: RM here denotes "Ringgit Malaysia" and nothing else!!!) biography could be served as guidance for generations 100 or 200 years from now ...... Given a choice between this RM1.28 per page biography and the texbook about "Ali, Salmah, Tong Seng, Ramasamy and Kumari" ... I would definitely opted with my eyes open the latter!!!!! Have pity on our kids please .... Till we meet again ......