Revisiting PWC - VII
The great philanthropist Sir Charles Henry De Soysa’s dream of
building two schools for children in Moratuwa and naming those as Prince
and Princess of Wales to commemorate the visit of Edward VII (Prince of
Wales at the time) to Colombo in 1875 came true when permission was
granted to his request by the British authorities. Consequently, on
September 14, 1876, Sir William Gregory, the Governor of Sri Lanka,
graced the occasion by officially opening the new seats of learning on a
picturesque 15 acre land facing the Galle Road on one side and bordering
the Lunawa lagoon on the other.
As a mark of commemoration of his great service, March 3 has been
named as PWC Founder’s Day (Flag Day) where students in pairs went
around Moratuwa town selling flags, proceeds of which went towards the
building fund of the College.
Flag sales
It was the time when the late A.P.M. Peiris, was our Middle School
Head Master, who called boys in pairs to his office and allocated tills
to collect money out of the flag sales with instructions to return the
collection on the following morning.
I was paired up with a classmate and I had to be accountable for the
‘filled up’ till at the end of the day. After a full day’s roaming on
the streets and being exhausted, I went home entrusting my mate to bring
the sealed container with the day’s collection to school on the
following morning which he completely ‘forgot’! This naturally forced me
into an embarrassing situation to face the Head Master.
Being a nervous wreck I avoided the Head Master for a week while
exerting pressure on my ‘partner’ to return the till but to no avail!
To cut a long story short, that collection never reached the
headmaster or me, and I continued to shiver with a self-reproach. Head
Master may have known that some ‘hanky panky’ had taken place but never
made an issue out of it so as to embarrass me, yet I had to live with
the guilt ever since. To this day, I am bamboozled to find out what on
earth happened to the missing till! Did my classmate actually forget
every time I pressurised him to bring it back……? Or was it a case of
procrastination which led to an embarrassing stage where it became too
late to return…….? Or did he really play foul remained, a mystery!
English medium class
Even after I left College, the sequence of numerous activities seemed
to have continued for a while as the teachers remained the same despite
rotation of students.
An Old Cambrian who happened to be in the final English medium class,
now living abroad, recollects how they were extremely happy, ‘under
duress of language barrier’, to see a Sinhala teacher among several
Indian Science teachers in the O/L class who could not utter a word in
Sinhala, after the English education system took a nosedive in 1960.
This had affected a section of students who were caught up between
the devil and the deep blue sea, especially those who had followed a
Sinhala syllabus in Grade Eight having to switch over to Science in
English. Despite the Indian staff who could not speak Sinhala and the
only Sinhala teacher who was fluent in English and Sinhala both deciding
to follow suit had apparently pushed some of the students into the deep
end of the education pool.
However, looking back at that era some would admit today that it was
in fact a blessing in disguise and praise the Sinhala teacher’s stance
at that time because, although it was hard and strenuous to cope at
first, they had managed to come to grips with the English language
within three months.
Old Cambrians
It is with such memories that some of the old Cambrians today pay
tribute to that Sinhala teacher for taking a firm stand however
‘unpalatable’ it appeared then.
An old Cambrian praising the Sinhala teacher, reminisces how on the
very first day the Zoology master walked into the classroom and wrote a
sentence on the blackboard ('Characteristics of living things') which
sent many to the ‘orbit’. The full-size word ‘Characteristics’ had
appeared completely foreign to the class! Those students who were in
that particular Zoology class, who are well to do professionals today
and leading comfortable lives while working abroad, are able to say,
“Thank you Sir, for everything we learnt from you both in Zoology and
everything outside the perimeters of the classroom”.
A lecturer’s ability to part with his/her vast knowledge to students
on the subject he teaches depends not only on his academic skills and
qualifications alone, but to a greater extent vibrant personality of the
lecturer helps to hold a whole class glued to his tutoring. In this
respect some of our favourite teachers have been able to achieve their
aim by garnishing lectures with a bit of wit and humour to make any
important area or a lesson glued to the grey matter in students heads
with jokey illustrations.
The most popular teacher happened to be a bachelor who was a thorough
gentleman, always smartly dressed in immaculate white. His lectures were
effective and entertaining. Most of the time he had a habit of facing
the blackboard and scratching his shirt and laughing by himself even
while demonstrating something on the blackboard.
Popular lecturer
Of all Science subjects Zoology lessons appealed to the pubertal lot,
especially when the area of reproduction was explained - from Amoeba to
the human. It was in such an occasion that the Zoology master managed to
lift students’ hormones to a pitch when he touched on the subject of
mammary glands of females.
The teacher gracefully accommodated any related question pertaining
to the subject matter in a professional manner without making it either
too serious or a joke. Such skills and qualities appealed to students
which made him as an extremely popular lecturer - that is the reason why
we talk about him even today!
Either being completely naive about the structure, development and
its functions other than feeding milk by mothers to offspring, one pupil
exceeded the limits of his enquiry by trying to be over dramatic when
the Zoology teacher shut him up with his usual smile: ‘Get hold of a
good looking female and examine!”.
A roar of laughter put an end to any further questioning!
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