A Classroom Scenario Version 2.0
- 'You Help Me, I Help You'

The Scenario:

In a Form Four classroom at the Technical Institute of Penang, forty-four years ago, a lesson of Additional Mathematics was commencing with Mr. Abraham as the subject teacher.

To begin the lesson, Mr. Abraham addressed the class in a soft-spoken manner, “Good morning ,boys.”

“Good morning,Sir!” The boys replied in a chorus.

Mr. Abraham continued, “Today we are going to deal with a new topic. It is about surds,indices and logarithms. Please turn to Chapter 8 on page 165. Let’s look at some of the formulae which we are going to apply in our exercises.”

He then copied ‘the laws of indices’ on the green board.

To show how the laws were applied in solving problems, he copied a few worked examples directly from the textbook. After that he jotted down on the board the number of questions which he expected the class to attempt.

“If you have any problem with any of the questions given, we shall discuss it later on, is it ok with you, boys?” Mr. Abraham asked the class.

“Yes, sir” the whole class answered in unison.

The class was back to pin-drop silence as every student was doing the assignment.

'Sub Sub Soi' was a typical hardworking boy. He had to give credit to his father for the name. His father wanted him to do things at a superb speed and efficiency like what people used to boast to others as with the colloquial phrase: “sub-sub water” which means ‘something very easy’. Unfortunately,the train of thoughts and the computational skill of Sub Sub Soi did not live up to his father’s expectation. Being a mediocre student, he found it hard to solve even the first question. After repeated attempts with repeated failures, he had no choice but to approach the teacher for help.

“Sir , could you help me solve this question?” he asked.

The teacher studied the question for a few minutes, pondered for a while, wrote a line or two on the board and then pondered again for a longer period. In the end,in order not to waste time as well as not to embarrass himself, Mr. Abraham pulled out from his ‘James Bond bag’ a school exercise book and flipped through the pages before he finally copied down the solution neatly on the board,word for word and step by step.

All this while,while Mr.Abraham was conducting the lesson in front of the class, a boy sitting at the back by the name of Patrick Kong was not bothered to listen. He had his head buried under the same Additional Mathematics textbook, but doing different exercises from a different chapter - a chapter not yet taught by Mr.Abraham. Under normal circumstances, a student would be punished by the teacher in class for inattentiveness or not following an order. He could be sent to the headmaster for more severe punishment like caning. But Mr. Abraham didn’t take any action at all. Instead, he would occasionally supplement Patrick with more exercise books for him to write on.

This was a ‘Rashomon’ that puzzled the class for a long period of time as Patrick was a quiet and studious boy and he did not wish to reveal anything to others. He seldom talked to others as he considered it was a waste of time to chit chat. He might as well utilise his time for self-study. But, after a lapse of several months, he was unable to contain himself any longer so he divulged his secret to his close friends. He had come to a verbal agreement with Mr. Abraham that he would do all the exercises in the Additional Mathematics textbook and write out all the solutions for Mr.Abraham. In return, Mr. Abraham would nominate him to the school prefect board for the following year.

Finally,the deal was sealed at the beginning of the following year, 1969, when Patrick Kong was wearing a school prefect tie.

You would not have believed that the concept of "You help me, I help you" is nothing new. It had already being practised some forty-four years ago in the Technical Institute of Penang.

A Classroom Scenario

-A Tribute to the late Mr. Oh Boon Tat
The Scenario:

At the workshop of the Methodist Secondary School of Nibong Tebal in the year of 1966, a lesson on Industrial Arts was commencing for a group of Form Two boys.

Mr. Ooi,being the subject teacher, had had his notes and diagrams copied on the blackboard.

After the boys had entered the workshop in a single file, they started to gather at the front benches of the workshop to jot down the notes from the board. It would take them quite some time to finish the task.

As the teacher had nothing else to do, he would tell stories for the boys to listen. But the most vivid one was about his student days in Technical Institute(TI), the only secondary technical school in the state of Penang. The person whom he always mentioned was his headmaster in TI.
To start off the conversation, Mr.Ooi would ask the boys,

“Do you know I had a terrible HM in TI?”

“Really?” Lau Beh was a bit puzzled and curious.

“Whenever a pupil chanced to meet him, he would be awarded with either a carrot or a stick. But then, it was more likely to be a stick than a carrot, you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Sukumaran .

“Because the HM expected all his students to pass every subject taught in school. For each subject a student failed in an examination, he was given a cut on the buttock. So you can imagine how many TI boys would pass out from the school without getting the punishment. Very few! ”

“Moreover, every time when a boy was sent to his office by a teacher, the first thing he would do was to give the boy a cut before he began to question him.”

“One good thing about the HM was that he was neither a hypocrite nor a conformist.”

“In his office, he would keep bottles of liquor on the shelf which no other HM at that time would do so.”

“And.... if he expected a heavy downpour before the school session was over for the day, he would order an early dismissal for the school.”

“Whenever there was an inter-school rugby or soccer match involving the school,the HM himself would mobilise the whole school to go down to the field to cheer for the school team. If for one reason or another, he was not satisfied with the umpiring of a match, half way through the game he would turn his back to leave the field. The boys would get the hint as to what they were supposed to do. A fight would ensue in the field and it would be reported in the next day's newspaper.”

For more than forty years I did not know, as well as I did not bother to find out who was the headmaster in TI whom my Industrial Arts teacher always referred to. In fact I had forgotten totally about the matter.

Only a week ago, while I chanced to flip through the 1971 school magazine did I manage to find the “missing link” from an article written by Mr.Tan Boon Hin in memoriam of the first headmaster of Technical Institute,Penang, who passed away on 9 July 1971.

‘The HM was Mr.Oh Boon Tat’.

The late Mr.Oh Boon Tat was directed by the Ministry of Education to pioneer the establishment of a secondary technical school in 1958. He served in the school as the headmaster until he retired in the year 1965.

As the headmaster, he had helped to inculcate and develop a deep-rooted school culture of loyalty to the school, respect for the teachers and prefects, a thirst for academic excellence and a love for sports. It was during his tenure as the headmaster that many of the school records set for the track and field events by the students then are still maintained and remain unbroken until this very day. I doubt they would be broken in the decades to come. As a Chinese adage says, “虎父无犬子”[hu fu wu quan zi]which means ‘a father as brave as a tiger would never produce a son as timid as a running dog.’ Similarly,with Mr.Oh as a strict and dedicated headmaster, the school had produced quite a number of outstanding students. All the efforts of Mr.Oh were not in vain. May his soul rest in peace and may we remember him always.

Related stories:

http://zest-zipper.blogspot.com/2012/03/classroom-scenario-version-2.html

http://zest-zipper.blogspot.com/2012/04/classroom-scenario-version-3.html