MCKK’s Early Days

Day 1: The College opened, 2^nd January, 1905.

Only 8 students registered, with 3 staff, Mr. W. Hargreaves, Mr. F.A. Vanrenen, and Mr. C.W. Rowlands.

Mr. Hargreaves, the first Headmaster, personally went around Kuala Kangsar to get enough enrollments for The Malay College to start.

Mr. Hargreaves went knocking at the doors of the palaces and chiefs’ houses to promote aggressively the Malay Residential School (as The Malay College was first known) for their children. The school, built in Kuala Kangsar was different then the already established Hogan School (later called Clifford School) about eight years earlier, which were open for all races. But this new school is for the Rajas’ and Chiefs’ sons, irrespective of age.

Hargreaves took advantage of the entry requirement that was silent on the “age limit”. Early student’s age varies from 8 to 33 years old. It was said that there was a student of genteel birth who was 33 years old on his first day in College. He already completed Standard 7 at King Edward VII and was also already working them. Some of the students have much more impressive moustaches than the Masters!

By March 1905, there were 63 students.

R.J. Wilkinson (1903) described the type of education needed… was one that would produce.

“A vigorous and intelligent race of young men who will be in touch with modern progress but not out of touch with old traditions; who will be liberally educated but not educated out of sympathy with their own families and people; who will be manly and not effeminate, strong-minded but not strong willed, acknowledging a duty to others instead of being a law unto themselves and who will be fit to do something in the world instead of settling down into fops, spendthrifts or drones”.

E.W. Birch (British Resident of Perak, 1904-1910, and a member of MCKK Board of Governors), being public school educated himself, he inspired the school to be directed along the European, especially the British Public schools of Eton and Harrow where the leaders such as Churchill and Nehru went through. The school should adapt the Public school ethos of character development and noblesse oblige (people of high social position should behave nobly towards others).