A teacher affects eternity...

Recently, we had a small gathering of former school mates. We were all from the same primary and secondary schools and two of us, Singaporeans, were there to meet up with our friend who was visiting from elsewhere. I haven’t spoken to this friend, P, for 40 years so it was great catching up. After a while, our conversation drifted to the topic of our former teachers, and invariably, we talked about the one teacher who left an indelible mark on our memories of school. This was our Maths teacher at secondary school, Mrs A.

I remember writing about my experiences with Mrs A before, but I did not know how my other school mates felt about her; we have never spoken about our individual experiences before. We were all from a convent where most of the girls were of working class backgrounds and a large number of these girls had fathers who worked at the huge railway workshop near our school. Indeed, in those days, most of the houses in that neighbourhood were built for the railway workers (and referred to as railway quarters) and their families although these days, it will cost you an arm and a leg to buy a place there.

The truth is I don’t remember many things about Mrs A, but a few unpleasant  incidents have been tucked away in my memory all these years.  My friend E, remembered her as a rather racist person who disliked dark skinned girls.  She recounted an incident where she saw Mrs A staring daggers at another dark-skinned classmate. “I shook with fear”, she said watching the hatred and anger in Mrs A’s face then.  It was rather dramatic and I did wonder if perhaps E’s youthful imagination went a tad into over drive then.  But I also asked myself why this one memory stayed with E after four decades.

Most of us remember Mrs A for her nightmarish Maths lessons. She would not just shout and threaten but she also slapped all of us freely. This was a woman who walked around during the exam peering into your test paper and demanding to know why you have left some sums unsolved. If your answer was not appropriate, like I don’t know how to do that sum, you were likely to get slapped.  I don’t know if I was born mathematically challenged but I am pretty sure I was terrorised into it by Mrs A. But, still E and I were the lucky ones who don’t remember getting slapped.

There were also all the different humiliating punishments she came up with when we failed Maths. Like being put out on show on the steps leading to the canteen with the test papers pinned on our uniforms. Or being led from class to class like criminals, with the offending test paper folded into a big bow on our chests.  We had to stand in a line in front of each class as examples of failures.  It is a miracle we did not all grow up to be insecure women, although some may have, like I did, develop a phobia for Maths.

So there we were, three grown professional women, sitting in the posh club of the hotel, each with a Singapore Sling in hand, recounting tales of Mrs A and shaking our heads with bewilderment. I imagined our younger selves similarly bewildered by the unnecessary cruelty and humiliation. What possessed her to do those things to us?

Mrs A has migrated to another country but several years ago, she was invited to a gathering of old girls (one that I did not go to).  My friend, P, recounted how she made a special effort during that event, to take a picture of Mrs A.

Why? I asked.

“I needed to show my children the teacher who slapped me two days in a row because I could not do the sums on profit and loss,” she replied.

Professionally, we have all come a long way since those days and we do have our teachers to thank. But that evening, we never once spoke of our favourite teachers or the teachers who helped us the most. Our thoughts, that evening, were consumed with memories of Mrs A and the helplessness and injustice we felt then. True, that was a long time ago and we should let it all go, but somehow, the effect of her actions stayed with us all through the years.   Perhaps she meant well and she just wanted us to work hard.  I’d like to think that too. But perhaps it was because she didn’t think much of us poor girls who, to her, would amount to nothing. As it turned out, we all proved to be one of the most successful batches of students the school has ever produced.  But now, even as successful senior citizens-to-be, memories of the one bad teacher still remain with us. 

Henry Brooks once said: 

A teacher affects eternity:s/he (sic) can never tell where his/her influence stops.  

In the case of Mrs A, her influence is indeed lifelong; we have never forgotten all the things she did to us. And she still remains the very model of a teacher we would never want our children to have.