Mr Tupai and The National Pledge

The Singapore Flag
The National Pledge of Singapore, an oath of allegiance, was first introduced in August 1966. It was an initiative by the Ministry of Education and approved by government. So when it was first introduced, the schoolchildren will recite the pledge at the start of the school day. This routine has stood the test of time. More than 50 years later, students are still reciting the pledge today. At the beginning of nationhood, the pledge became a rallying cry for the country and has engendered a sense of pride. commitment and faithfulness for many succeeding generations of school children. 

It all started with us in Sec 3B Science, we were the first batch of Singapore schoolchildren who recited this pledge. At that time there were two sessions in school, the morning and afternoon sessions. Secondary 1 to 3 classes were in the afternoon session and Sec 4 to Pre-university 2, the morning session. It was like a rite of passage when we moved from the afternoon to the morning session because now we were allowed to wear white long pants instead of short pants, signalling that we have come of age.

Every school day morning, the older boys would assemble by the flag poles and the school and national flags would be raised. After this the school with one voice would recite the national pledge by heart. There was no assembly in the afternoon session school as it was too hot in the post noonday sun to stand in the field. Instead the class monitor, Cheong Moon Foo, would place a board of the national flag on the black board in front of the class, call us to rise to attention and recite the pledge. Heng Kian remembered that we were very enthusiastic at the beginning and recited with loud and shrill voices.

Pretty soon, this became rather routine and boring for 14 year old boys. We started to play tricks and got to mischief. Pledge-taking always took place in the presence of the teacher taking the first lesson. One of them was a Malay teacher, whom we had nicknamed Mr Tupai or Malay for Squirrel. His name was Chegu Kassim We gave him this nickname after the first chapter of our Malay textbook which was on squirrels. Now Mr Tupai had a terrible tic which he failed to notice. Ever so often he would end his phrases with éh, for example 'once upon a time éh there was a princess éh who lived in a shoe éh'.

One afternoon we connived to end the phrases of the national pledge with éh! So we stood up with Mr Tupai present, faced the flag and started, 'We the citizens éh of Singapore éh pledge ourselves éh as one united people éh regardless of race, language or religion éh....Mr Tupai became hopping mad and he turned around, shouted 'Lionel!! Who made the screeeehing sound!!!!' Off course, no one owned up nor spoke anything. We all stood sheepishly listening to him shouting who made the screeching sound. At last after several very uncomfortable minutes, one of us, Chong Huai Seng, went to the front and expressed deep remorse (probably fake). Thereafter as a class Huai Seng led us to apologise to Mr Tupai. We could barely contain the giggles and snickers.

Mr Tupai, as the National Language teacher, was the brunt of the class anger against the subject. During the years when Singapore was in Malaysia, Raffles Institution thought that it would be good if the boys studied Malay as a National Language subject. It means we had to learn three languages, English, the mother tongue, for many this means Mandarin and then the National Language. The Chinese boys felt that it was a unfair disadvantage to them because this subject was an examination subject and was affecting their results in the final exams. The Malays and Peranakan boys in class will score much higher than them. Many poor performers in the National Language were threatened to be relegated to poorer performing classes. Unfortunately we took our frustration out on poor Mr Tupai.

So we committed many a school boy prank on him. Regarding the irreverent recitation of the National Pledge, it was just schoolboy prank at that time but the message was relayed. Subsequently Mr Tupai dropped his tic and éh.

Contributed by Lionel, Chen Wen and Heng Kian

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