Do You Know Egypt?
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A
very innocent question asked many times by the Chinese Language teacher of
those who took Chinese as their second language conducted in the Sec 3B Sc
classroom. He could have asked about
other places with the same outcome but he chose Egypt each and every time. Perhaps he was fascinated by ancient
civilizations especially one like Egypt that dated well before even the Chinese
civilization.
Mr.
Egypt told interesting and purportedly true stories to students when he was not
teaching or after he had finished what he intended to teach for the period. The authenticity of his stories was often met
with skepticism followed by the question, How do you know? It became a
standard routine.
His
answer would invariably be “Do you know Egypt?”
When
the inevitable answer “yes” was given, he would ask “How do you know Egypt?”
The
expected standard answer was “I read about it.”
Mr.
Egypt would then end the standard routine with “I knew it the same way as you.”
The
exchange was simple and straightforward in those days. One cannot help but reflect back on those
good old and simple days when the answers were plain and final. Today when the authenticity of something is
questioned, the answer would be very far from clear and final. Typical answers would be “I googled it” or “I
heard about it from a reliable source” and the answers vary from one extreme to
the other and everything in between.
Hence
“Do you know Egypt?” still resonates with us today in more profound ways.
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Mr. Egypt strongly and emotionally objected to Alexander given the honorific 'The Great' when all he did was invade, plunder and enslave other countries and nations. In those days we had great difficulties understanding why he was so emotionally charged by this suffix. Today, understanding the real motives behind the past imperialistic tendencies of countries like Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and current domineering nature of USA, EU and PRC, we can appreciate the reason for Mr. Egypt’s rage over the conquering Alexander being called 'Great'.
It
could be Mr. Egypt’s taking life too seriously or just his seemingly eccentric view
of Alexander the conqueror of the known
civilized world at that time, that the class could not help challenging
themselves to see if they could unveil more about him by behaving mischievously
towards him. Some examples were:
Many did not like the Chinese (Mandarin) second language subject because it was hard to score high marks in the examinations. Joe Chua confessed that he kept failing and finally getting F9 at the O level exams. It was so dull for him that he slept while Egypt was teaching. This was in Secondary One. Mr Egypt caught him napping, made him stand up and then slapped him on the cheeks. This was an acceptable punishment then but if it happens today, the teacher will surely get into trouble with MOE. According to Joe, for safety reasons, those who wore spectacles were asked to remove them before surrendering their cheeks to be slapped. To add insult to injury, Joe Chua was made to stand on the chair for the rest of the lesson. This punishment caused Joe to hate the Chinese subject.
Kim Quee remembered that Egypt once tried to slap Cecil but he ducked. According to Cecil when he ducked, Mr Egypt's palm hit the hard metal surface to the desk. He did not even flinch. Egypt tried very hard to teach Mandarin but the boys only remembered his idiosyncrasies. Cecil said that he tried to convince the class the value of the pictorial and symbolic representation of the Chinese scripts compared with romanised English words. He claimed that it does not make sense why we pronounced tailor the way we do. Why pronounce 'Tai' and 'lor' like tay ler, he would say.
Swee Chuang was caught cheating in a Chinese class test one day. He placed the textbook on his laps underneath the desk but he did not realise that Egypt stood behind him all the while watching what he was doing. When asked Swee Chuang replied sheepishly, "just taking a look". For some reason, he escaped corporal punishment but was given a duck's egg for the test. This incident made him study the subject hard and he scrapped with a 'just passed' or S8.
When the National pledge of allegiance was introduced for the morning session it was recited after the flag raising ceremony at the start of school. For those of us in the afternoon session, we took the pledge in class and a cardboard Singapore flag was placed on the blackboard and we would stand and recite the pledge. Someone, perhaps Hui Kim, drew on the blackboard a flagpole with flag and a stick figure raising the flag. Someone wrote 'Mr Egypt' pointing to the stick figure.
Those mischiefs are now
looked back with fondness.
By today's re-thinking of history in the cancel culture era, Mr Egypt's views are becoming accepted. Poh Seng now thinks that Alexander was not so great and that Great Britain is a misnomer. Mr Egypt, might have a point there that history is rather biased towards the West which means that he was ahead of his time. He is a Chinese scholar which accounted for his Eastern oriented views.
Contributed by Chen Wen, Joe Chua, Poh Seng, Swee Chuang
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