Secondary school also was the time when I became more involved in school activities including being a prefect and a school librarian. Whilst I was good at my studies generally (in particular Mathematics, English and Geography) one year in my mid-teens, we had a great Literature teacher, a young and attractive Eurasian lady called Ms G. who inspired us through her teaching and generated much enthusiasm for her literature classes. Her essentially participative approach to learning by encouraging us to immerse ourselves in the literature texts was such a breath of fresh air. It left a deep impression on me. The core text for the literature class was Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and this was followed by the Thomas Hardy classic Far from the Maddening Crowd. Of the former in particular, Ms G got us all involved in actively memorising and taking part in different roles in the play during the literature class. We became so engaged with this Shakespearian play, memorising almost every line in it, so much so that, with her encouragement, we actually went on to stage it in a public concert held at the school hall one evening. I remember that one of the tasks assigned to me in preparing for this concert was to make a lookalike large tree stump (that was used in the backdrop scenery) out of paper, wood and cardboard and I spent inordinate number of hours at home painting and perfecting this ‘lookalike’ piece of work! When the time came I proudly presented my ‘masterpiece’ which the whole class and especially my teacher thought was a brilliant piece of work! In this way we became totally engaged in our learning. This recalls a well-know educational dictum often ascribed to Benjamin Franklin: ‘Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn’. As an educator myself, I have come to really appreciate the meaning of this quote. To this day, I still remember many passages of this wonderful Shakespearian piece of literary work by heart.
Another piece of work that captured my imagination during this secondary school period was Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Maddening Crowd; a moving story of steadfast loyalty and unrequited love. I imagined myself in the position of Gabriel Oak, hopelessly in love, steadfastly loyal yet having to suppress his own feelings for Bathsheba Everdene. The way he endured her rejection of him, humbled himself by accepting paid appointment at her farm after his own farming business failed, just to be close to the woman he loved so that he could look after her interest, exemplified the kind of self-sacrifice and integrity I admired greatly. All this, however, only to find himself having to stand by and witness helplessly as she commits the folly of falling for the dashing Sergeant Frank Troy who betrays her and is eventually killed for his misdeeds by another jealous admirer William Boldwood in a fit of fury. Through her trials and tribulations Bathsheba comes gradually to rely more and more on Gabriel Oak to help her out not realising how much her own well-being depended upon his loyalty. The final twist comes when Oak decides to leave the country and it is only then that Bathsheba realises that she cannot do without him. The dramatic twists and turns in this Hardy classic captures, to my mind, much of real goings on in the everyday life of ordinary individuals caught up in the contradictory tensions between reason and emotion, between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and between sacrifice and selfishness. This kind of narrative with its richly nuanced twists and turns belongs to a literary genre that seems to be no longer in fashion. For me, my appetite whetted by this kind of literary exposure at an impressionable age at school helped shaped my own social sensibilities and a heightened awareness of the real paradoxes of life. When I eventually ended up living in Devon, England many years later, I could not resist visiting the nearby counties of Dorset and Wiltshire where the filming of the novel had taken place. It brought back vivid memories of what I had read in my youth
