1966 - the vi teachers

(Click on pictures for enlarged view).

The line up of teachers in Form 1 North was:-

Class,English,Art - Mrs.Chong Hong Chong,College Trained
Maths - Mr.T.Rajaratnam,College Trained
History - Mr.Kok Hee Fatt,R.T.C. Trained
Geography - Mr.Teh Mun Hing,R.T.C. trained
National Language - Cikgu Noran,Language Inst.Trained
General Science - Mr. Loong Nyi,R.T.C Trained

None was a graduate, but they lacked in nothing for that. The system was such that you had monthly tests, as well as mid-year and final term exams. And lots of homework! Even if you were involved in official school extra-curricular activities, the teachers brooked no excuses. They were constantly on your back, to make up for whatever they lacked in making you fully understand the topics as not every teacher was an excellent communicator.

It was a system that worked well because the teachers cared and kept you on your toes. That saved you from last minute cramming for tests and exams. It also gave you more time to work on your ‘grey area’ topics and revisions before the end-of- the- year exams.

English was the medium of teaching and essay style answering for History, General Science and Geography was in force. By the time we reached Form 3, additional ‘objective question papers’ and 2HB pencils came into vogue for Maths, History and Geography. The short answering system now used ubiquitously is one of the main reasons for the decline in English language standards over the last 40 years.

I have already written about Mrs. Chong and her diligence in drilling into us the rudiments of English language, though she had her odd cranky moments too. I was reminded by A.Ramachandran about an incident involving Teoh Siang Chin (now doctor and ex-President of the MMA). While Mrs. Chong was blathering on about prepositions and conjunctions (another of those really interesting topics like the sex life of the Malayan rhinoceros beetle) Chin’s gaze was affixed in the direction of the Sports Pavilion clearly visible through the open doors of 1 North. When pounced upon by Mrs.Chong, Teoh, startled out of his reverie, blurted as he pointed with his fingers, "Two dogs fighting teacher there!”.

‘No,” corrected Mrs.Chong, “You mean, Teacher, I was distracted by two dogs copulating over there by the Sports Pavilion,” as she copped him a couple over the ears and thrust and ground her English Grammar Textbook in his face!

Teh taught us this cute little trick of making small cardboard cut-outs of the outlines of country maps which you could use when taking down Geography notes. This was a great help for students like me, whose magnificent free-hand drawing of the map of peninsular Malaya was once famously described by relief teacher Mrs. Lee as ‘Whoa, what have we here? Picasso? A real jambu looking bulging brinjal’! Mrs. Lee was one of those female teachers whom even the F1 boys would check out as we passed her along the school corridors! Ask Cheah and Fong, and they will fall over laughing when reminded of Teh’s peculiar pronouncing of ‘Wanganui’, ‘Taranaki’ and ‘Rotorua’ when introducing NZ geography. Teh was strict, but fair.

T. Rajaratnam was of course of the same ‘fire and brimstone’ mould as Valentine Manuel. He was also the revered School Cricket Master and coached hockey as well. But, unfortunately, by the time he came upon our batch, he had lost one leg below the knee, to cancer. So, it was a somewhat subdued Raja who taught us Euclid’s and Pythagoras’ theorems. The feather duster was his weapon, though in 1966 Raja wielded it relatively sparingly. Sadly, Raja succumbed to terminal cancer in 1967 at a very young age.

I still believe that this ‘old’ system of teaching Maths from foundation, theorems and proofs leads to a better understanding of the subject as well as to a nimbler mind. This is as opposed to the modern method of heading straight to the solution and short-cuts to solving problems. Only a month ago, my neighbour’s son who is in F2 came to seek some help from me on ‘construction methods’ with compass, protractor and all. It was clear the teacher had not shown him why the construction of the 60 degrees or 30 degrees angles from right-angles and arcs was correct. ‘In the old days’ Raja would have first talked about the equilateral triangle and then proceeded to ‘prove’ his construction as ‘100%’ correct’ QED! (Or am I the odd one out, old fashioned?).

Now, Kok Hee Fatt was a different kettle of fish. He would blow hot and he would blow cold. He eschewed the lecture style of teaching for the blackboard. You had to copy his History notes rapidly. The chalk duster in his left hand would fly in pursuit of the rapidly moving chalk in his right hand like hounds after a panting fox in bloodsport hunt. But he came prepared for his lessons as the facts were a lot more than you could get from your text-book.

Once, he had given us some homework to be handed in the following day. Now, we have all had this experience where we would take extra, extra, extra care to pack the homework book in our satchels the night before so that we would not have to earn the wrath of the teacher. And the following day, sure enough, when the time came, the History homework book was missing from my bag (I found it later under my work table at home)??!! I panicked when Kok confronted me. I pleaded that I had actually completed the homework in class the previous day before going home. Kok not only laughed but sneered as well. He smelled a kill! Kok was famous for his stomach corkscrew twist-pinch and I stood there white-faced and zombified, not unlike a hypnotised rat waiting to be swallowed whole by a python or anaconda!!

Just when all seemed lost, my good friend Kow Yoke Wah (I don’t know what possessed him, but I would have given him the Victoria Cross were it within my powers to do so) stood up and blurted out that what I said was true (and it was). That saved my bacon! Yoke Wah’s wealthy family operated a chicken farm at the back of Imbi Road Postal and Football field. As far back as Standard 4 in PRES 1, I would walk with him from his ‘farm’ to the mamak bookshops in Jalan Imbi to buy the latest editions of Enid Blyton’s ‘Secret Seven’, ‘Five Find Outers’, ‘Famous Five’ etc, and after reading them, exchange books with him. Later, Abdul Jalil, another '66 virgin, lived in the upstairs of one of these mamak shops, as did Santhiranathan and his elder brother, Mr.Selvanathan, a BSc who taught Additional Maths in VI in 1970!

Kok Hee Fatt was also in charge of the Under 13 Football team which I captained in 1966. (You can see that gained me no favours with him). The team included one, a then relatively shy and unknown, Mokhtar Dahari! I shall devote a full posting on Mokhtar Dahari the legend, later, and about how we almost came to blows in Form 2!

Our team won all the preliminary inter-school games, some by huge margins. The matches would have been played under a Sahara sun with the mercury steaming out of the thermometer!! Just to rub it in at home matches, Kok would get us all to run a couple of times more round the 400m athletics track and up and down the hill slopes, AFTER a full 90-minutes inter-school match. This would be done in full view of the defeated opposition which would still be panting and quaffing from plastic cups the post-match iced lemonade supplied in plastic pails by Tuck Shop Boss Man, who attended most of the soccer matches played on home ground, especially the Under-20 games. (He once turned up in Kuala Kangsar to witness the annual VI-MCKK soccer showdown, such was his enthusiasm, devotion and support for VI soccer! In later years we would, during centralised Hockey Training, flirt with his friendly and giggly daughter Ivy, who helped out at the Tuck Shop and brought the iced drinks on to the field as well). There is a cricketing term and strategy invented by Alan Border, ex-Oz Test Cricket Captain (1984-94), called ‘Mental Disintegration’ meaning, to further grind into the dust and grime an opponent already facing humiliating defeat. Kok was clearly way ahead of his time!

But in the finals against St,John’s Institute, played on a somewhat wet and muddy soccer pitch at Brickfields Road School, we were unexpectedly undone 2-0 by the brilliance of SJI’s Johnny Loon Tsai, who in later years played for Selangor Schools. I had performed dismally. Our team included, besides myself as centre forward and Mokhtar Dahari as inside left, other regulars like ‘Thunderkicks’ Fong, left winger Amiruddin, Sallehuddin, Indran, Shook Keong, Liow Soo Chong as goalkeeper, Ket Chong, Balraj and Abu Bakar (who scored the winning goal for us in the U11 finals played at Merdeka Stadium between PRES1 and Prices Road Primary School in 1964). There was also Ee Beng Yew (2nd goalkeeper), who unleashed an amazing, brilliant and winning 45m drop kick goal from beyond the half-way line at the Royal Selangor Grounds to secure a famous Dr.Lewis Trophy Rugby Finals win against RMC in 1970.

Kok did not attend that final U13 final as it was inexplicably played during school hours (10 a.m.) a few days before the end of 1st Term. When I returned to school and gave him the bad news, he was furious and ordered me to report the result to HM, Mr.V.Murugasu. That’s when my better instincts got a firm grip on my regimented senses. I pretended to head in the direction of the HM’s office upstairs and when Kok was out of sight, veered to my classroom. I knew better than to approach Muru with such bad news, the reward for which would have been nothing less than six of the best! For the next couple of days, Kok would look quizzically at me, wondering why I looked normal, if not cheerful, after a visit to Muru’s office!!

But for all that, to paraphrase Bill Cosby’s message to his wife, “I love him more today than I ever did back then all those 43 years ago when he ordered me to go to Muru as the sacrificial lamb’!! Ha, ha! Sometimes, when I lie awake late at night in bed, the ghost of a smile would stretch my face, and a chuckle or two would leap out, which would have my wife querying if I’d finally lost it!

Loong was good at General Science and popular with all the boys. Again, respect was given whether they were strict or not. Rarely did we go overboard with any of these teachers. Once a month we would have a double-period session when we could ask him any (reasonable) question on science and he would answer it. To my amazement he patiently explained to the class my smart-arse question about how trees became petrified (like us F1 students when Manuel or Murugasu appeared). I still don’t understand it!

Form 1 hockey also came under Loong’s portfolio, but there was no inter-school competition (only Under 15). I remember him warning me about deliberately under-cutting the ball, which, if one was not careful about, could cause serious injury to someone on the field. But, such unsporting behaviour was never in my mind. I explained to him that the grass had not been cut on the practising pitch, and so whenever I took a big swipe at the ball, it was already sitting on top of a plateau waiting to do a ‘Houston, we have lift-off’! We graduated from 'firewood' hockey sticks in PRES to zinging Indian 'Chakravarti' and Pakistani 'Karachi King Super' brands which we cherished ownership of, like Gold!

We were prepared well by Loong for the final term exams and I fancied that I was above average in science. Unfortunately, the paper was set by Valentine Manuel. To this day, I think Manuel deliberately set that question which had everyone reaching for the scoped Magnum 45 with the cyanide tipped dum-dum bullets that would make a narrow pinpoint entry in the frontal lobe of the skull, but blow everything out the back, leaving a gaping hole in the rear of the head the size of the Grand Canyon. The cyanide was added to make sure the job would be done if by some miracle the victim still survived the blast. If we had a handheld grenade launcher with heat seeking missiles attached, we would have brought that into play as well, just to be absolutely sure!

The famous exam question was “What are the two systems?” I swear that is exactly as it was framed 43 years ago. No more, no less!

This stumped me when I first read it and so I moved on to other questions. I had a spare couple of minutes towards the end, and wrack my brains as I would, I could not crack it. What 2 systems? Chain and Pulley? Eastern & Western? Science and Religion? English & Malay? 5-3-2 and 4-4-2? It eventually dawned on me that it must have something to do with Science. Feet and Inches? My desperate Genting Casino answer was Centigrade and Fahrenheit. Boing! Wrong!

Well, Manuel’s answer was CGS and FPS systems – Centimetre, Gram, Second and Foot, Pound, Second. Maybe 3 guys out of a total of 180 students got it right, and that too I would wager was by pure guesswork. It was nowhere in out textbooks or notes. You lost 1/2 mark if you did not submit the abbreviated answers or include 'systems'!! In a competitive school like VI, the difference between the prize-winner and the next 20 top scorers could be as little as two marks!

Cikgu Noran was the quieter type and spoke English well. But the rules for learning Malay were simple. You could not speak in English during his classes or use modified English words in comprehension exercises or essay-writing. Even ‘Hospital’ was disallowed. It had to be ‘Rumah Sakit’. We learnt pure, unbastardised Malay. Where now is the ‘Campaign for Pure Malay Language?’ In tatters, that’s where! Noran also stood in as cricket coach for the junior squad. He really had no real knowledge of or enthusiasm for Cricket. But he would nevertheless turn up punctually for all the practice sessions and stay till the end. That was enough for the students who were often coached by the senior players like Zainon Mat, who eventually captained the Malaysian national team.

And that was the thing about those teachers. They would turn up in numbers for the practices, inter-school games and society meetings late afternoon. I don’t know if they were paid any allowances for these after-school activities, but such dedication deserves being worshipped. These days, students could count themselves lucky if the teachers made it to the classroom during normal school hours consistently! No doubt, The HM, Muru’s, leadership was the driving force, but the commitment from the teachers then was unwavering and awe inspiring.

As for Valentine Manuel, what can I say? We all had a love-hate relationship with him. At sharp 7.25 a.m. you could hear the ‘phut, phut, phut’ as his smoky Yamaha or Honda struggled up the hill to get to the parking area and to class or the Sports Pavilion (he was in charge of PE classes, Physical Exercise, as well as Athletics) before Muru spotted him. It was obvious he had splashed talcum powder on wet face in a hurry, because it caked in splotches on his cheeks. And he walked like a snorting, stalking bull which intimidated even the hard-crusted Rex Theatre 08 (Kosong Lapan) gangsters in school. Amazing that he later successfully gave up teaching for the legal profession!

The fact that he was not my General Science teacher did not mean I was spared his rod. Among my hand-me-downs was a well-thumbed copy of the Form 1 General Science textbook, which had been revised. So, before Loong’s lessons started, I would dash over to 1 East and borrow the new edition from fun loving and cheeky Michael Nettleton (ex-PRES 2) who was in the same football squad as I. Michael was poetry in motion in the 110m high hurdles. He had an elder brother, Harold Nettleton, who had some run ins with Manuel. The Nettletons had Portuguese blood. Michael was among Manuel’s ‘favoured’ students and across the length and breadth of the corridor we could hear the frequent calls of ‘Come to the front, De Melo’ followed by the thwack, thwack , thwack of feather duster on school pants. De Melo is a slang for the Portuguese, I believe.

As bad luck would have it, Manuel spotted me borrowing Michael’s book. Manuel had seen me before on the football field, but that cut no ice with him. We were both summoned to the front of 1 East and received 3 cuts from his infamous feather duster on our palms, in front of the whole class which had no idea why we were being Manuelized. I don’t recall if I said sorry to Michael, but that evening I begged my grandfather to use his Court and Police connections to have Manuel arrested under the ISA and locked up forever!!

On another occasion, it so happened that a taxi disgorged its passengers in the main porch of the school while classess were in session. I North was the 2nd class to the right of the porch and 1 West, the 2nd on the left. In between were 1 South and 1 East, with 1 South and 1 East separated by the main hall way leading to the common corridor. Just after that period was over, in stormed Manuel, and without so much as an ‘excuse me Mrs. Chong’ demanded that all those sitting in the row immediate to the porch side step out. Nine were each given 3 strokes of the best for failing to inform the taxi driver that it was against school rules to drop off passengers at the main porch, followed by Manuel’s ringing ‘Damn swine, now you will learn!’ All students seated in similar rows in the others 3 Form 1’s also received the same punishment. Fortunately, I was in the second row! But for the rest of the year, we all kept one ear and one eye in the direction of the main porch whatever lessons were on. We were terrorised and half stressed out by Manuel’s unpredictable mood swings.

But perhaps it is that incident over ‘Manual Labour’ headlines in the NST that takes the cake.

The school field tended to get waterlogged after even a moderate downpour and so plans were drawn up to lay pipes to improve the drainage system. Presumably some Engineers had been engaged to carry out the survey and draw up the master plans. One fine day, all those in F1 – 5 were told we would have combined PE classes the following week. Other lessons were re-scheduled to accommodate it. When we assembled on the field that Tuesday morning, there stood Manuel, with engineering plans in hand, and directed us to assist the school ‘Mandors’ to gather changkuls, dig, fill up coconut-fibre baskets and deposit mud and earth by the land at the edge of the field! The grass was marked over with turpentine and chunam (limestone) for the drainage lines. This went on for a few days with different batches of students, before someone leaked it to the Press (I swear it wasn’t me or my brother). 'Breaking News' screamed the NST and Malay Mail with pictures and all. The School denied it, but as sure as the sun rises in the East, it happened!

I noted some years later that Manuel reserved this ogre pose for the fresh batch of Form 1 students. It got much easier and relaxed with Manuel in Forms 2 and 3.

The other new thing we encountered in Form 1 was swimming lessons. VI was the only secondary school in Selangor, probably in the whole of Malaysia too, with a 25m enclosed swimming pool within the school compound. Some years later, we would climb on to the flat open roof-top of the pool to watch for free Malaysia Cup Soccer matches being played at night in Merdeka Stadium as we had a clear view from atop over the school side of the fence and walls that separated the stadium from the school.

Before that I would occasionally head to the Weld Road Public Swimming Pools (at the back of the now defunct Edam Seafood Restaurant) where the Pavilion Mall now stands, for a dip with friends for 20 cents entrance charge. I took to chlorinated water like the Apache Red Indian to soap bath. I would immediately get into sneezing fits.

Swimming lessons as the 1st or 2nd period in the morning sure was a bitch!

We had to don proper swimming trunks AND approved rubber swimming caps in the changing rooms, wet ourselves in the freezing common showers, dip our feet in the chemical bath and then line up by the pool side by which time Sawn Off Broomstick Handle (SOBH – refer to posting on 8/6/09) would be waiting for us. If it was a particularly windy or chilly morning, that, as SOBH said ‘is your bloody problem, I’m not your fairy godmother’.

Many made the fatal mistake of turning up for the first ever lesson without swimming caps.

SOBH’s punishment for that oversight was two full-swing resounding thwacks on the meaty part of the buttocks with a sawn off broomstick handle. Thus another legend was born. Among the legendees who wore the painful welts and bruises for a week or more were TA Mohan (now consultant surgeon), Teh Kim Hock and Mac Kean Boon.

They were culled like poor, innocent baby seals in a Norwegian slaughter fest frenzy! I and others like Fong and Cheah escaped the massacre as we had borrowed approved rubber swimming caps from elder brothers in VI!!

Scoreline: SOBH 2, PRES 0 !!

- to be continued.

AKAN DATANG - what's the connection between Awang Goneng and Judo? And what has the great Eusabio to do with Ramasamy? Ramasamy who? you say? TUNE IN 1st JULY 2009