To the lower secondary school teachers with love...

PFS was a new experience for me when I stepped into its compound in the early days of the year 1976. Besides the super-smart students that I had mentioned in the previous posts, there were equally memorable and dedicated teachers to match that. The most striking teacher that awed me was the late Mr Koh Sin Ghee. In Form 1A, he taught us the English Language. But in reality, he opened my eyes to many other things in life, like divergent thinking and letting the mind wander as well as being verbose. He would come in dressed in his 'uniform' of a long-sleeved white shirt, black pants and crimson coloured tie, carry his briefcase bearing his initials KSG. He would try to humour our young impressionable minds by saying that it stood for 'Kiss Some Girls', contributing much to the class's commotion. We called him DOM (Dirty Old Man) instead. 

He was a self-proclaimed walking dictionary as he tried to open our eyes to the plethora of words in the English Language that (at least to me) appeared gibberish. He would impress us with bombastic words like rendezvous, gargantuan, melancholy, debris (with silent 's') and on and on... so much so that I started a scrapbook religiously enlisting all the 'new' (at least to me) words introduced by Mr Koh, which on average is about 5 words a day. Generally, his class is filled with laughter. Some of us will forward to his dirty jokes and newly coined words like sexperiments, mostly self-discovery of one's own adolescent body! And his dirty humoured laced quotations like, "Hope like eternally in the human in the human breasts!" (emphasis on breasts) and "Time flies, man's hopes go!" The second quotation was more like a sign off when he leaves the class, much like in the 'Mickey Mouse Club' where their parting song goes, "...and now it is time to say goodbye to all our company, MIC....see you real soon, KEY...why? Because we love you, MOUSE...and the waving of the cute children, which included Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who later become not such good role models!


Coming to KSG, he looked a bit like Costello (of Abbot and Costello), short and plump. His temperament was sometimes unpredictable. He would be jovial at one instance, and suddenly he would explode in anger when someone in the class misbehaves (usually chit-chatting or napping). His usual weapon is the soft blackboard duster he would use as a missile to throw at the offender, occasionally missing its intended target.
Rumour had that KSG was a compulsive gambler and declared bankrupt. Many angry old ladies were occasionally seen harassing him, and he sheepishly quietening them. KSG used to sell his personal collections of stamp collection and related paraphernalia to the class students. All the stress must have taken its toll on his health as he succumbed to a coronary event a few years before his retirement when we were in Form 4 or 5!

My form teacher in F1A was Encik Azman Aziz, the fair pot-bellied Randhir Kapoor look-alike sloppy appearing Bahasa Malaysia teacher who was actually trained to teach English. He was called in once to fill up for a dearth of Bahasa Malaysia teacher, and he never taught English after that! Despite his lethargic outlook, he was quite a good Bahasa teacher. I can categorically say that I obtained a distinction in Bahasa Malaysia in SPM through his early input.

AA usually speaks English in the Malay Language class. There was once a circular from the education office requiring everyone to converse in the Malay language in the language class. One fateful day Cikgu Azman attended the class. We had just finished a strenuous (as usual) physical education under Mr Wilson Doss, and we were cooling down under the fan. AA told us to cool down first before we started the class. One smart alec (PV) immediately told not to speak in English in BM class, and the correct word should be 'sejuk bawah', much to the amusement of the whole class! And off PV was sent off to stand at the corner of the course. It was quite distracting with a 6ft 2in figure is standing facing the wall for the entire period whilst lessons went on as usual afterwards!

Lat's caricature

The History syllabus in Form 1 started with the beginning of human civilisation itself -the Indus valley civilisation of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. This was covered by a fierce-looking over-sized over-endowed tight cheongsam clad tiger-eye bespectacled teacher named Mrs Lai. She was the exact replica of fierce teachers depicted in Lat's cartoon strip! She was later replaced by a highly viviparous but not so vivacious, Cilla Black hair-styled (of 'A Lover's Concerto' and 'Blind date' fame) Puan Majidah, who had just returned from maternity leave. As far as I can remember, she was perpetually pregnant (twice between 1976 and 1978). 

She managed to be pregnant more successfully than she cared to teach us history! Her teaching strategy was simple - a student reads a page aloud, she re-read the page aloud and asks students to underline the relevant parts of a page. Students receiving textbooks for a loan were told to erase the underling before returning them! The stars answered our prayers in the form of Mr Lee Kok Keng, who gave new meaning to learning and relevance to History in Form 3 via his critical dramatisation and story-telling mode of teaching. It was as if he was there at the turning point of history! We missed the lessons that he had to miss as he had to handle the textbook loan scheme at the beginning and end of the year.

Art and craft had never been our cup of tea. Mr Kam Eng Chye just managed to kill the passion and the hidden talent (if there ever was) altogether. I do not remember a single thing that he taught as an Art teacher. He would just come in and ask to draw this and that, without teaching about colours, shades etc. Unlike now, there were no textbooks for Art and Craft either. Only Ho King Hee managed to produce masterpieces after masterpieces, especially for the examinations, with his mother's help or someone who was an art teacher! This changed when Mr Tan Teong Kooi came to the picture in Form 3. The bearded teacher with dark glasses was the patron of the Photographic Society of the school. He at least taught us something which at least helped to get a 'C' in Art! He actually was impressed with a painting of mine which depicted an old lady who was choosing durians from a roadside stall, and he pasted it in the Art and Craft room! And helped in crafting a comical puppet head (Puss in Boots type) for SRP. His wife, Mrs Tan Teong Kooi, was a no-nonsense Maths teacher and my form teacher in Form2A. Mr KSG once made a sexist joke in front of her, only to be told off in a very nice way outside the classroom! Their son, Rene, a year younger than us, was an all-rounder. He excelled in sports and studies and was the head boy of his batch.

Nana Mouskouri

Geography was taught by Ms Teh, a dedicated mild-mannered teacher with Nana Mouskouri hairstyle and spectacles.
Ms Tai was a fierce spinster with a bulldog face who taught us Commerce. She looked like a potato with toothpicks at four sides, further accentuated by her tight body-hugging cheongsam. Another fierce lady taught us English Literature. All I remember of her name is that we use to call her 'Gagool' - the same character (an evil witch doctor) that she was trying to teach from the book King Solomon's mines.

Talking about slave drivers, Mr Wilson Doss fitted the bill absolutely. He was supposed to teach us PE, but he would ask us to do manoeuvers that were humanly impossible, like Duck Walk and Crouch Bounce. The aches from the exercises would last a whole week until it was time for another session. His famous words were, "Do as I say but don't do as I do!" as he had a drinking problem and subsequently succumbed to it. Despite his strict disposition, he was liked by many, especially the cricketers, as he moulded the school team to victory.
In Form 1, we got the most uninspiring teacher of Science in Mr Chew Kee. He was a plain Joe with forever the same set of attire and brown plastic bag tucked under his armpit and cycled to school daily on his grandfather bicycle.

Ray Milland

Another funny character with a twisted sense of humour taught us Science in the form of Mr Teoh Chin Kooi. He had the uncanny resemblance to Ray Milland of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Dial M for Murder' with the same broad forehead, receding hairline and back-combed hair. One day his lesson to teach prisms had to be cancelled as it was raining. He then told us, "We will do the experiment tomorrow but ask your God not to pass urine tomorrow!"

Before Paul the Octopus came into existence, we had our own soccer soothsayer through Mr Chang, our Mathematics teacher. 1978, when we were in Form 3, was a FIFA World Cup year. Mr Chang was the first to discover that the cup always stays in the host continent, except for Brazil, in 1958. His exception seems to have recurred in 2002 (Brazil won In Asia), and this year - Spain won on the African continent!

Cikgu Ibrahim:2010

En Ibrahim recently appeared on the 50th anniversary of the 7th Georgetown South Scout movement in Penang (see pic). He was the Afternoon Session supervisor and a strict discipline master. He had taken a few relief classes and tried teaching a thing or two. What I remember from his classes is the joke that he had repeated a bit too often. A young boy went to a shop to buy pencils. He picked up a pencil and its cost. The shopkeeper said, "10 sen". He picked a second and asked him again. This time, the shopkeeper said, "15 sen!"  So our hero put back the first pencil and pays the shopkeeper only 5 sen!

He and so many other teachers like him who found great pride and pleasure in their profession are true icons of 1-Malaysia. Their sweat nurtured the young ugly ducklings into majestic swans that we are today. To all my teachers, a big 'Thank You' from the bottom of my heart!

Next attraction: Upper secondary teachers...