To sir with love

Maj Gen (Dr) Tilak JAYAWEERA (rtd)

GREAT TEACHER: “What a teacher is, is more important than what he teaches” This quotation of Karl Menninger stimulated me to pen a note to appreciate this great teacher, who has rendered yeoman service to us Royalists for more than five decades.

It is said that a good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others and that is exactly what Vijitha Weerasinghe has being doing almost his entire professional life, as teaching remains the profession that teaches all other professions. It is our wish that this candle should go on for decades.

I walked into Weerasinghe’s room, fully equipped with an exhaust fan a safety precaution, to prevent the visitors from getting choked on the 11th of September to seek permission, to write about him to the media on his eightieth birthday that falls today, only to be flatly refused.

When I explained, my desire to write about him, which was not only as a mark of respect and to wish him well on his eightieth birthday but also to make it an opportunity to make the world know, “what a noble profession teaching was” and its sad plight today, when we hear teachers holding students to ransom, following the foot path of learned medical men like us, who are famous for holding patients to ransom at the drop of a hat, when we hear of teachers brutally assaulting students and are refereed to as brutes, my request was granted conditionally.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it, is fast becoming a lost tradition, as the age old saying goes “Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson, the present is tense and the past was perfect”, and so it was.

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings.

There were teachers and teachers at Royal but Viji Weerasinghe was unique; this uniqueness is explained adequately by William A Ward’s famous quotation: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates.

The great teacher inspires. Need I say more? He was; he is and he will be an inspiration to all of us hopefully for a long, long time. In a nutshell he is an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.

My first acquaintance with this great teacher was way back in 1961 as a student in his Upper V Latin Class. Two things I remember, one was everybody except yours truly, got distinctions and the other was his famous saying, Da mihi basia mille, meaning “Give me thousand kisses” If you tell this to Weerasinghe today, I bet my last copper he will go on, Da mihi basia mille; deinde centum; dein mille altera; deinde centum.

The subjects he taught us were English Literature and Latin. In those good old days Mr Viji Weerasinghe was a robust young man, who was referred affectionately by a nick name which I am forbidden to tell, for reasons best known to him. Mr. Weerasinghe had a pleasing personality and was one who never lost his temper and kept his cool as far as I can remember except for one occasion.

In the Latin class for some stupid thing I did, which I can’t remember, Mr Weerasinghe did hammer me first by hand and then by Virgil Aeneid the Latin text.We used to get slapped virtually by every master at college not because teachers were bad but we were.

This was routine. How ever you might probably be hearing for the first time, an incident where Mr Viji Weerasinghe has hit a student. This is true. I happen to be the only student Weerasinghe had hit in his entire teaching career. This paid rich dividends later.

It was in 1982 that I went to meet Mr Weerasinghe when he was the Deputy Principal to seek his advice to get my son admitted to college. Those days there were men in the legislature who could formulate laws for school admissions unlike today but the competition was still stiff to get a child into Royal.

I was given an additional mark at the interview that followed, in open court for being the only student to have got hammered by him. See how far small things go. This is the uniqueness of Weerasinghe.

He had character and integrity and never hesitated to call a spade a spade. Weerasinghe had spent 73 years of his life at Royal, 14 years as a student; 21 years as a teacher; six years as a head master; nine years as a deputy principal and ten years as a vice president and advisor to the Royal College Union. This indeed should be a world record and find a place in the Guinness book of records.

Weerasinghe was not only a teacher, not only a head master, not only a deputy principle, not only an adviser to the College Union but was more a human being par excellence.

Every time I left this noble personality, either at his residence or at his office, never did I fail to worship him, in our traditional style irrespective what attire I wore whether that of a General or that of a civilian.

In this context what better way can I sign off, other than quoting a Gatha from the Maha Mangala Sutta “Pujacha pujaninanan, ethan mangala mutthaman” Sir, You are one person, who should be venerated; and we shall.

Today on your eightieth birthday, Royalists Young and Royalists Old join me in wishing you a Very Happy Birthday and a Long Life.