Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  ‘Well, which one do you love?’ Maria had asked.

  ‘I don’t know, it depends,’ she replied.

  ‘Which one is most likely to be unfaithful?’ Emily asked, remembering her own husband’s disgusting infidelities.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said gloomily.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Maria brightly. ‘Why don’t we do things systematically, like the government’s systems engineers, that is, we assign a value to each of the attributes of wealth, looks, possession of Mercedes, G.C.E. O Level, character, etc., add them all up, and see who scores the highest!’

  In the end, the undertaker was the loser; not even his valued certificate combined with his semi-detached house and Mercedes could trump the yuk factor of his occupation, which, however, might conceivably convert into an eager wow, if he had possessed, additionally, a penthouse, a Lexus and a verifiably huge bank account.

  Over the years, the more enlightened among Singaporeans had drawn attention to the flaws of an educational system so dependent on paper certifications and called for urgent redress if young Singaporeans were ever to become creative, independent-minded and in tune with a rapidly changing world. ‘Are we aware,’ went an anguished letter in the Forum page of The Straits Tribune, ‘that while our students abroad excel academically, they rank appallingly low in creative thinking and personal and social skills?’ But fear was too valuable, indeed, too essential an instrument to discard: take it away, dispense with the exams, said the teachers, and students would no longer have any motivation to learn.

  In any case, the fear of exams was of a piece with the political climate in the society; without fear, said the great TPK, nothing would get done, people would slacken, they would spit on the streets and litter public places, unruly elements would come out of the woodwork to cause disruption and disorder, opportunistic foreign elements would enter and create mischief, and Singapore, from a much admired city-state, would be no better than the many failed societies in the region and the world, permanently mired in chaos and corruption. Use the cane, said TPK, and if it doesn’t work, get hold of a bigger one. His most quoted pronouncement was that he would rather be feared than liked.

  Singaporeans, are you aware that forty years ago, you lived in slums that had no proper sanitation?

  Are you aware that our streets are among the cleanest in the world?

  Do you know that every one in three Singaporeans owns his home?

  Aren’t you pleased that we have the lowest crime rate in the world?

  Aren’t you delighted that Singapore has been ranked as the most successful economy in Asia?

  We are Number One!

  Are you happy?

  Nobody thought to ask that question; instead of the enthusiastic ‘Ay, ay!’, Singaporeans might have looked puzzled, or looked uneasily at each other. Maria thought, maybe I could write a little collection of satirical stories, beginning with one on the decreed power of the G.C.E. O Level Certificate: a school principal, against the promptings of her heart, turns the school into a virtual boot camp to secure good exam results, the students suffer enormous anxiety, and the school suddenly finds itself in the midst of a political storm when its poor exam results coincide with a spate of student suicides.

  I will have to persist in my hypocrisy and use the very instrument I despise, thought Maria Seetoh, if I want to get my students to pass those wretchedly intimidating exams. As English language teacher, she felt the brunt of the intimidation, for English language had highest ranking among the subjects; a poor grade in the English language paper would render the entire certificate quite worthless for getting into the junior colleges, and thence into the university. The road to higher learning, a good career and a happy, successful life in the society was unremittingly laid out for the young Singaporean, and the burden of launching him upon that road fell largely on the English language teacher.

  There was also the plaque presented to her as a token for her role in improving the English language results of St Peter’s Secondary School over the years; now she would have to outdo herself. Her special concern was for a group of students who came from purely dialect-speaking homes and environments; they were sure to do badly in their English paper, being incapable of writing a grammatically correct sentence if it exceeded ten words.

  One of them whose name was Hong Leng, a very thin boy with a large Adam’s apple and grave-looking eyes behind his thick glasses, stopped her one afternoon as she was walking to the staffroom and said, ‘Miss Seetoh, I very scared. I can get distinction in maths and science and commerce but I sure to fail in the English paper. That mean I fail whole exam. Can you give me extra homework? Or extra coaching?’

  The boy was one of those desperately hopeless cases every English language teacher invariably encountered and eventually gave up on. Maria looked at him sadly, already seeing the ignominious F9 in the certificate when he came to school to collect it some months after the exams.

  She said lamely, ‘I’ll see what I can do, Hong Leng,’ meaning she could do little. It was difficult to shake off that look of despair which followed her all the way home.

  The next day, as she was walking out of the school gates, a very thin, worn-out looking woman approached her. Speaking in dialect she introduced herself as Hong Leng’s mother, and then, to Maria’s horror, she whipped out of her tattered handbag a large envelope, half opened to show the wad of dollar notes inside, and tried to press it into her hand. Bribery of a teacher in any form was a highly culpable act, to be reported instantly; Maria felt nothing but pity for the woman who was probably a cleaner at some restaurant or shopping centre.

  She said severely, ‘You must never do that again,’ walked on miserably and in that moment was fired by the determination to do whatever it took to get Hong Leng to achieve at least a passing grade in the English language paper of the G.C.E. O Level exams.

  The examination system had suddenly become that monster in the cave, which, if it could not be slain, could at least be avoided and outwitted. Maria Seetoh, she told herself, Hong Leng’s mother has thrown at you the greatest challenge of your teaching career, and you have to accept it. The greatest challenge, she suddenly realised, had nothing to do with the ideals of her chosen profession and everything to do with brute bread-and-butter realities.

  What she called the Eureka Moment, when the odd bits floating about in her imagination suddenly came together to form a complete story, sometimes happened when she was doing the most mundane things, such as sweeping the floor or brushing her teeth, as if her wildly soaring muse needed to be dragged down to earth. She would then pause, wide-eyed, to let the newly born story scroll through her mind, committing it to paper, in quick notes, as soon as she was free of the day’s tasks. The equivalent of that magical moment came as she was sipping coffee, well past midnight, after poring over a stack of past G.C.E. O Level English Language papers, scrutinising the wide range of composition titles and topics offered to candidates to see if she could comprehend the unruly foe, study its every sinister feature and come up with a method to dodge its moves. Feeling that delightful cartoon flashbulb lighting up inside her head, she said excitedly to herself, ‘I can help poor Hong Leng.’

  A strategy had suggested itself which, being so much at odds with the ideals of an institution of learning, she would have been acutely embarrassed to use in her role as teacher. But as secret tutor to Hong Leng over the two months just before the examinations, she would have no qualms about taking on the role of an educational Machiavellian armed with pure savvy and cunning to best that G.C.E. tyrant.

  ‘Alright, which composition topic must you absolutely avoid? Show me,’ she demanded, having worked out what she called a schema of salvation for Hong Leng.

  The boy who came during the weekends for the extra coaching absorbed every instruction with fervid attention, taking down notes copiously, asking questions eagerly. By now he knew the kinds of titles that he had to avoid, like poison, said Miss Seetoh, because they were far too difficult
for him, and would condemn him to a straight F9.

  The first stage of identifying the most deadly features of the enemy was crucial. They were the argumentative topics that asked about the good and bad points of having national zoos, of depending on the tourist industry, or of abandoning traditions, the descriptive topics that required him to describe his ideal home or the ideal library; the abstract topics with deceptively simple one-word titles like ‘Love’, ‘Happiness’, ‘Dreams’. Conceptually and linguistically demanding, the topics must have been designed by the examiners for the elite few from very privileged English-speaking homes, who, at fifteen or sixteen years old, were already capable of mature thinking and expository writing. They were clearly not at all meant for the rest of the students from the high-rise, government-subsidised flats, who if they chose these composition topics would flounder from the opening sentence.

  Hong Leng, with five sample past examination papers spread before him, duly ruled out, with a red pencil, all the treacherous topics. That left a few out of the dozen or so provided. They were the friendlier, less demanding narrative topics requiring the candidate to provide a story for the given title. The titles were generously broad, to allow the candidate to come up with a simple story, within the limited time given, from personal experience or pure imagination: ‘Write about the happiest day in your life.’ Write a story with the title ‘Too Late!’ ‘One evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard a strange sound….’ Continue the story.’ ‘Was there a time when you made a serious mistake and suffered the consequences? Write about it.’

  Maria said, ‘Hong Leng, tell me again what you must do as soon as you look at the exam paper.’

  Hong Leng said confidently, ‘I must cancel out all the dangerous topics’.

  ‘Good. What must you do next?’

  ‘Look at the narrative topics, choose one and circle it in red.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then I must underline the key words in the topic.’

  ‘Okay. Now show me which key words you underline in this topic.’

  The procedural meticulousness could save a student’s composition from that fearful F8 or F9 grade. For one of the greatest exam disasters was to ‘go out of point’, by which a student missed an important word in the question or misread it, thereby submitting a composition that could well be construed by the annoyed examiner as a pre-prepared piece of work. Irrelevance, possibly indicating cheating, could thus carry an even greater punishment than weak grammar.

  ‘Describe a recent occasion when you suffered a disappointment.’ There was a student, some years past, who had not been mindful of the key word ‘recent’, and had written about a real childhood experience six years ago. She was one of the best students in her class and had been expected to get a distinction. Her poor grade created a flurry of activities, initiated by her shocked parents, that ended with the school writing to the Cambridge examiners to make an inquiry, and their subsequently conducting a proper investigation that unearthed the serious mistake that the student had made. Singaporeans could be apathetic about public or political issues, but be roused to extreme passion and action when their children’s educational well-being was threatened.

  For years, the story made the rounds of the schools as a cautionary tale. Some teachers had developed a method of instilling so much fear about ‘going out of point’ that their terrified students never made the mistake again: their ruse was to write a huge, ferocious ‘F9’ across each page of the offending composition with a brutal red marker, and pin it up on the classroom news bulletin board for public humiliation of the offender.

  Hong Leng, by prior acquaintance with the monster’s deadliest feature, would be able to avoid it. There were other dangers to be taken into account.

  ‘Alright, Hong Leng, how much time did you take to do this composition?’

  The boy, in working on the extra compositions at home, had to be trained to write the required two or two and a half pages within the allotted one and a half hours. He was slow, and at the first attempt, had managed only a three quarter page, but was steadily improving. What would be the use, explained Miss Seetoh, of producing a first-class introduction to your story, going on to a first-class first paragraph and then hearing the exam invigilators announce, ‘Five minutes more!’ or ‘Time’s up!’? Time was another foe to reckon with.

  ‘Alright, Hong Leng, tell me, what tense form should you use throughout in your story?’

  ‘The past tense, Miss Seetoh.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the tense form in this sentence:

  ‘During the last holidays, my parents visit Malaysia –’

  ‘ ‘Visited Malaysia’, Miss Seetoh.’

  ‘Good. Remember, after you finish your composition, to check all your verbs, and see if they have the past tense form. You know what verbs are, Hong Leng?

  ‘They are the doing or action words, Miss Seetoh.’

  ‘Good. Now tell me, how long should each of your sentences be, Hong Leng?’

  ‘No more than ten words, Miss Seetoh.’

  The shorter the sentence, the less chance for students like poor Hong Leng to make grammatical errors. Complex and compound sentences were death traps. No examiner could punish a student for short simple sentences even if these were uninspired and uninspiring, but they would apply the ruthless red pencil to long, sophisticated sentences that were sure to succumb to the traps of English grammar and syntax.

  Maria thought: for Hong Leng’s sake, I’m going to subvert the very purpose of the examinations, to undermine its role as a true test of merit. She would of course always have nothing but contempt for those who tried to get hold of exam papers before their release, using any means, including bribery, to break the traditional tight security enforced upon these all-important, life-affecting documents. It must be the dream of every lazy, incompetent, irresponsible student to know all the exam questions beforehand, get expert help for the answers, learn them up, write them out with a flourish in the exam hall and then sit back, for the remaining time, to watch the other students slog away.

  There had been a case, in Meeta’s and Winnie’s school, of an attempted break-in; the exam papers, kept locked in a safe in the principal’s office, were saved from theft only because the school night-watchman doing his rounds had spotted the intruder who instantly fled. Beyond the sheer desperation of such attempts, the annals of exams must be filled with all manner of cheating.

  Did the final stage of her strategy in helping Hong Leng, smack of cheating too, because it involved actually preparing answers beforehand?

  ‘Hong Leng, I want you to think of three or four happy or positive experiences in your life and also of unhappy or negative experiences.’

  All the narrative questions in the exam paper invariably asked about each or both of such experiences. Hong Leng duly came up with two lists.

  ‘Now Hong Leng, I want you to write out short paragraphs, as many as you can, describing your feelings, pleasant and unpleasant. Describe your joy, surprise, excitement, gratitude, affection, admiration, love, and so on, as well as anger, disappointment, fear, frustration, distress, despair and so on.’

  The suggested feelings covered virtually the entire range relevant to the entire corpus of narrative topics, possibly for the entire history, over generations, of the paper; there could not be a greater offer of guarantee. Miss Seetoh, armed with this certainty, set Hong Leng a large quantity of homework which the boy worked at most conscientiously and enthusiastically. The next, and final, step was for her to correct all the grammatical and other mistakes in the submitted compositions, then hand them back for Hong Leng to study meticulously, even learn by heart, for reproducing in the exams. The trick was to knit together some of these pre-prepared paragraphs into a full composition, and hey presto! a reasonable credit was assured. She had discovered the formula for passing an exam, thus undermining its integrity and her own as a teacher.

  The boy’s joy must not be diluted b
y guilt. The stack of marked paragraphs now in his keeping, Miss Seetoh explained, were all his own work, for she had merely corrected their grammatical and other mistakes, therefore if he made use of them in the exam, he would be in no way cheating. Maria Seetoh thought: I am the real cheat. She, teacher of English and literature, enjoined with the purpose of inculcating a true love of the subject in her students, of preparing them for life, had reduced that noble purpose to the passing of exams. She was helping to turn out a conveyor belt of exam-smart students who would find good jobs in the society and be absorbed into the rules-governed, unquestioning, unthinking culture that the great TPK favoured.

  ‘Really, I don’t care much,’ she said to herself in the mirror, in the privacy of the bathroom. Lately she had taken to talking to herself, to help clarify her own thinking. She had become two selves: the public persona as she engaged with others in the world with its many perils, and the private person as soon as she returned home and became absorbed in her own, dear world of private thinking and feeling. Be in the world, but not of it, was the advice of the holy book she had left behind but never forgotten for its occasional insights into the day-to-day struggles of decent men and women. Be pure as the dove, but at the same time, be wily as the serpent. How much of the dove and how much of the serpent had she been as wife, and now as a teacher?

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said again defiantly, ‘as long as I’m happy.’ And she had not been as happy for a long time.

  Hong Leng passed the English language paper in his preliminaries and actually scored a strong credit in the G.C.E. O levels. On the day he collected his results, he shyly presented a ‘Thank You’ card to Miss Seetoh overflowing with effusive gratitude (with three grammatical errors, she sadly noted). Every year, long after he had left school, he would send her Christmas and Chinese New Year cards. He landed an extremely well-paying job in a computer firm, writing to tell her about it and to add, with self-conscious pride, that he was going to get married soon to a wonderful colleague. ‘I will appreciate very much for your kindness to attend my marriage,’ he wrote. When the prime minister lamented the poor standard of English in formal and business letters, he could have had, in mind, Singaporean users of English like Hong Leng.