It was 1978, I was in Form 1, my Mum was still teaching in the primary school next door and and my own class teacher was Pn Aminah. One of my close friends then, and someone I recently very happily reconnected with, was Eric Toh. One afternoon, I had something urgent to announce to the class and I asked Pn Aminah permission to do so. She asked me to wait as she was attending to some of the other boys. I remember there wasn’t actually any lesson going on and the class was quite boisterous, as any class of 13 year-olds would be when the teacher was either missing or preoccupied.
Minutes passed and I brought the matter up again to Pn Aminah who once again asked me to wait.
More minutes, more waiting until I finally got quite fed up and also quite petulant. In frustration I exclaimed very loudly something to the effect that I couldn’t be bothered to try and help the class anymore. I never did make the announcement.
The next day and again it was Pn Aminah in class and once again the class was a little noisy. Hmm I’m seeing a pattern here I had not seen before… Anyway, through the burble of voices, I heard my name called. Pn Aminah looked up from talking to a few boys in the front and asked me ‘John did you do it?’ I thought she was referring to something that Eric had done which was rather good though I forget what it was now and I said ‘No Cikgu, it was Eric.’
There was confusion for some time as she was clearly referring to a different matter, then it slowly emerged that at the end of the previous day, someone had written something nasty about her on the blackboard and she had thought it was me because of my outburst. She asked me directly in front of my classmates and when I denied it, she said ‘I think it was you’ and I then denied it again and the matter was, I thought, laid to rest.
At home, during casual conversation with my Mum, I mentioned the incident as a sort of ‘funny thing happened to me today…’ and ‘guess what? I stood up to Pn Amindah and showed her who’s boss.’ sort of thing. To my surprise, Mum became very serious and asked me some very direct questions ‘What exactly did she ask you?’, ‘Was this in front of your classmates?’ and so on. I thought it strange but explained the whole thing as best I could and that was that.
Until the next day.
Once again the class was a noisy, active mass of white-shirt/green-shorts pubescent boys. Yes, there definitely was a pattern to Pn Aminah’s classes then, come to think of it… Again through the burble of voices I heard my name called. I stood up and as the class fell silent at her gesturing, she said to me ‘I would like to tell you something. Your mother came to see me this morning and we had a talk about what happened yesterday. I would now like to apologise to you for accusing you in front of your classmates when I didn’t know for certain if you’d done what I thought you had.’
I was quite taken aback. A teacher apologising to me? Almost immediately a wave of bravado and smugness swept over me and I generously replied ‘It’s OK Cikgu, no problem.’
When I got home that evening I asked my Mum if she had been to see Pn Aminah and she explained why she had: ‘When I studied to be a teacher, we learnt child psychology. I told your teacher that it was not right to accuse a child in front of his peers without complete evidence. It can destroy a child’s ego and confidence. She agreed.’
My sublings and I were brought up in a non-touchy-feely environment. An almost typical Asian family, in other words. We never hugged, much less kissed and I never heard a single member of my family say ‘I love you’ to another. At that moment however, I think I loved my mother very much and although she went on to do much more we are proud of, that was probably the first time I felt immensely proud to be her son.
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