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.