Thank you for this story
If, decades on, there is one image of you all to remain etched in my mind, it would be your raucous laughter, fresh and plangent as if I had heard it just now. I have always held that the best things in life come unexpected and unplanned; and some of the most lasting of things too - encounters brief but fierce, and whose echoes remain long after due farewells. Ours is one such chance encounter. Right from the beginning, I knew that I’d only be with you for a semester of five months. We weren’t supposed to meet, for I was originally allocated other classes. But I was a convenient choice, if not a risky gamble. Thus, a sequence of unplanned, unexpected, random events culminated into my becoming your teacher for not one, but three subjects.
Naturally, our English lessons, by sheer importance and copious interaction hours, formed the bedrock of our relationship. It is with this notion - that I’d only be with you briefly, that I abandoned all conventions of the English language lesson - the dreary, mechanical, unhelpful grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension exercises - and instead strove to develop in you two bases: a love for the English language; and a passion for the endeavours that you undertake. To do that within such time limitations meant I had to abandon the textbook and assessment books and other some such nonsense. The beauty of the English language cannot be found amongst those sterile pages; and assiduously preparing you for one mid-year examination wouldn’t make you love the language an iota more, nor would it prepare you for a role in this powerful play called Life. I wanted to make sure you’d grow to appreciate the beauty of language, if not, then at least know that there is much, out there, to love.
So the gamble, indeed a risky one, became the gambler, and grammar took a backseat. Where can good poetry and prose be found? I suppose in all the readings that I’ve given you, each one from a master in the language: Shakespeare, Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Nabokov, Coetzee, Winterson, Mark Doty, Muriel Spark, Carver, Hemingway. And to provide some soft comfort along this daunting journey, we enlisted the help of local writers: Catherine Lim, Philip Jeyaretnam, Colin Cheong, Alfian Sa’at, whose stories you appeared to have enjoyed immensely. To make sure you don’t feel alone in this seeming cruel, isolating world of teenhood, we read The Catcher in the Rye, and of course, the utterly indispensable and wildly popular The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook. Not great literature, the last three, but they sure grabbed your rare attention. They got all of you to read. And I'll never forget the times you all chanted poetry with someone standing on his desk clapping out the rhythm. That was electrifying.
But all that I’ve given you are only a foretaste of the wide, almost inexhaustible platter I hope you’d discover on your own in the years to come. Just don’t stop looking. Where can knowledge and wisdom be found? Where can beauty, passion, life be found? Amongst the few places that you would have to discover on your own, in Literature, and most of all, in yourselves. You remember the movie Dead Poets Society, where the boys’ teacher Mr Keating quoted Walt Whitman:
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here-that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
The stories that we tell ourselves and our loved ones, are what define our humanity, are what comfort, console, and ennoble our lives. And do live your own lives, for if you don’t, others will. And they would steer it to places you don’t want to go, and where it might be too late to return. And you wouldn't be happy. Chart your own paths, take the roads less travelled; find the passions that would obsess you for a lifetime, where those obsessions would become your guiding stars and keep you safe and sane. I hope you have enjoyed the stories and have been elevated by them, and I hope as this powerful play goes on, you too will contribute a verse, just as you all, by being yourselves, each human and divine, have contributed one to mine and enriched my own. I could not have asked for a better and more lovable class. Thank you for this story.
Naturally, our English lessons, by sheer importance and copious interaction hours, formed the bedrock of our relationship. It is with this notion - that I’d only be with you briefly, that I abandoned all conventions of the English language lesson - the dreary, mechanical, unhelpful grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension exercises - and instead strove to develop in you two bases: a love for the English language; and a passion for the endeavours that you undertake. To do that within such time limitations meant I had to abandon the textbook and assessment books and other some such nonsense. The beauty of the English language cannot be found amongst those sterile pages; and assiduously preparing you for one mid-year examination wouldn’t make you love the language an iota more, nor would it prepare you for a role in this powerful play called Life. I wanted to make sure you’d grow to appreciate the beauty of language, if not, then at least know that there is much, out there, to love.
So the gamble, indeed a risky one, became the gambler, and grammar took a backseat. Where can good poetry and prose be found? I suppose in all the readings that I’ve given you, each one from a master in the language: Shakespeare, Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Nabokov, Coetzee, Winterson, Mark Doty, Muriel Spark, Carver, Hemingway. And to provide some soft comfort along this daunting journey, we enlisted the help of local writers: Catherine Lim, Philip Jeyaretnam, Colin Cheong, Alfian Sa’at, whose stories you appeared to have enjoyed immensely. To make sure you don’t feel alone in this seeming cruel, isolating world of teenhood, we read The Catcher in the Rye, and of course, the utterly indispensable and wildly popular The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook. Not great literature, the last three, but they sure grabbed your rare attention. They got all of you to read. And I'll never forget the times you all chanted poetry with someone standing on his desk clapping out the rhythm. That was electrifying.
But all that I’ve given you are only a foretaste of the wide, almost inexhaustible platter I hope you’d discover on your own in the years to come. Just don’t stop looking. Where can knowledge and wisdom be found? Where can beauty, passion, life be found? Amongst the few places that you would have to discover on your own, in Literature, and most of all, in yourselves. You remember the movie Dead Poets Society, where the boys’ teacher Mr Keating quoted Walt Whitman:
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here-that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
The stories that we tell ourselves and our loved ones, are what define our humanity, are what comfort, console, and ennoble our lives. And do live your own lives, for if you don’t, others will. And they would steer it to places you don’t want to go, and where it might be too late to return. And you wouldn't be happy. Chart your own paths, take the roads less travelled; find the passions that would obsess you for a lifetime, where those obsessions would become your guiding stars and keep you safe and sane. I hope you have enjoyed the stories and have been elevated by them, and I hope as this powerful play goes on, you too will contribute a verse, just as you all, by being yourselves, each human and divine, have contributed one to mine and enriched my own. I could not have asked for a better and more lovable class. Thank you for this story.