In Days of Yore - by Earnest Lau

Affectionately known as the Mr. Chips of ACS, Mr Earnest Lau has influenced the lives of thousands of ACSian students. Many older ACSians associate him with the stirring and nostalgic “40 Years On” which he taught and sang with gusto when he first joined ACS as a teacher in the mid-fifties, whilst others from the 1977 to 1983 era remember his charismatic leadership when he was Principal.

An author of several books, Mr Lau is presently the Archivist of The Methodist Church in Singapore.

We invited him to share his vast knowledge of ACS history with our readers and in this issue, he reminisces his school days in ACS.

The Coleman Street Experience
I became a pupil of the Anglo-Chinese School in Coleman Street in January 1938 when I was admitted to Standard II at age 9. Prior to that, my brother and I had been largely home schooled by my mother, who was Headmistress of the Geylang Methodist Girls’ School, and where I was briefly introduced to formal education.

I vividly remember my teachers because their character and strict teaching played an important role in influencing me. In Standard IIA (equivalent to P4), our classmaster was an elderly and saintly man, Mr S.M. Sundram, a model of patience who never lost his temper although he did raise his voice occasionally. He believed in incentives, and offered prize money of 5, 10 or even the princely sum of 50 cents to the first alert boy who could answer a question which he posed at odd moments. Although we may now smile at the puny sums he offered when a bowl of noodles cost 2 or 3 cents, eagerly snapped up by hungry schoolboys at recess time in the tiffin shed. But the modest prizes were an incentive for the boys to keep on their toes. He also introduced us to Bible verses, the earliest of which I recall was John 1:4, “In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.” Of course, there were other verses, as well as the famous verses inscribed all round the upper walls of the Chapel Hall from Proverbs (3:5-6) and Ecclesiastes (12:1), and which all true-blue ACS boys know by heart.

In Standard IVA, Miss Bella Russell taught English, and her proper English pronunciation and use of the language provided us with a valuable model, although the other teachers also spoke clearly and well. Miss Russell also taught singing in the Chapel hall which had been built by our founder in 1885. She emphasised singing using ‘the head tone’, is how she put it. We practised the ACS anthem and hymns (from “Hymns of the Kingdom”, no longer used) for the weekly Chapel, as well as English folk songs and ballads (such as “Barbara Allen” and “Loch Lomond”) and ‘patriotic’ songs (such as “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia”) for special occasions like Empire Day and Founder’s Day. Then there was an annual Children’s Concert held at the Victoria Memorial Hall which we all attended with a number of other city schools. Here we sang the songs we had learnt in singing lessons, an experience enriched by magnificent pipe organ music played by an expatriate official. All these seem distant to us today, but they introduced us to an established cultural tradition. We would otherwise have been much poorer for the lack it.

In 1941, my last year in Coleman Street, I was promoted to Standard VA of which Mr Lee Choon Ngee was class master. He was a no nonsense teacher, a Lieutenant in the Singapore Volunteer Corps, who expected his instructions to be carried out promptly. But, he knew his material and spoke well, and when he taught Geography, he lectured with gusto, and without notes, on a variety of South American topics. The boys enjoyed his lessons and were proud to be in his class.

Of course, there were activities outside the classroom. One of these was PE, and the Primary School Sports Day held in the small playground on a level area next to the “tiffin shed” and where a new classroom block was built in 1956. Swimming lessons were held weekly, when the whole class/form was marched up Canning Rise to the YMCA swimming pool. Swimming instruction was an asset which few schools provided and explains the proud swimming tradition of the School.

Since there was no proper ‘sports field’, official games competitions on campus were limited to netball and badminton, the latter played on a court just next to the Middle School building and I can recall champions like Sng Haw Par (who later taught in the old School). Of course, most boys played local schoolboy games such as “chapteh” (shuttlecock), gasing” (tops) and marbles, and derived schoolboy excitement collecting the rubber seeds which fell from the trees planted on the hillside. Inter-class and inter-house matches were played during recess time, watched by scores of enthusiastic supporters, each cheering for his class or House named after Oldham, Thoburn, Goh Hood Keng, Tan Kah Kee and Cheong Koon Seng. Boys were assigned their House affiliation according to their school admission numbers. I was proud to belong to “GHK House”.

Sack Race on ACS Sports Day, circa 1938

Of course, examinations were part of the system, and promotion depended on them at the end of the year. At the end of Standard IIA, we were promoted to Standard IIIA that was housed with Standards IV and V in the Middle School building (next to the Masonic Lodge). Mr Gan Kee Tian was classmaster of IIIA and he sat boys in order of merit, the top boys taking the column of desks directly in front of him, followed by the rest sitting in columns next to them. Each term, as the class positions changed, seating positions changed.

War broke out at the end of 1941, and Singapore suffered from meaningless death and destruction. Like my classmates, we were promoted to the Secondary School which was held in a Chinese-style building in Cairnhill (that still stands). But no sooner had school assembled in the first week of January than classes were suspended because of the increasing severity of the air raids, and school remained closed for the next three and a half years.

ACS in occupied Singapore
The Japanese Occupation of Singapore from February 1942 brought with it its own troubles, of which the disruption to education was just one. All secondary schools remained closed, and only a number of schools were allowed to function as “Former English Schools” up to Standard V. ACS pupils from Coleman Street were moved from their premises (where the buildings had been taken over by the Japanese military) and moved to a former Chinese school building in Sophia Road where it functioned as “Sophia Road Boys’ School”. Here, I spent one year before I left to work in two Japanese firms, mainly as an insurance against being drafted for service outside Singapore – now renamed “Syonan”. Nearby, Methodist Girls’ School became known as “Mt Sophia Girls’ School.”

As may be imagined, school life at Sophia Road Boys’ School was different from what we were used to. Although lessons were conducted in English, Japanese (“Nippon-Go”) was a compulsory subject. The teachers, who had to undergo training in the language, were mainly from pre-war ACS and included Mr Thio Chan Bee, Mr Yong Ngim Djin, Miss C. Reutens, Mr Lau Hee Boon, Mr R. Hanam and Miss D. Hanam, among others. Mr Yong, who excelled in languages, quickly mastered and taught us “Nippon-Go”, some of which I still remember. Another feature of the curriculum was being taught Japanese children’s songs, many of them quite melodious.

Each school day began with the singing of the Japanese national anthem, followed by bowing low in respect to the Emperor. This was followed by “Radio Taiso”, a 10-minute mass exercise by all pupils and teachers, accompanied by music broadcast on the radio, so that every school performed the exercise at the same time.

To help overcome the growing nutritional inadequacy, an innovation was started by my father. As headmaster he acquired a regular supply of red palm oil which was administered to pupils by the spoonful every morning by one of the school servants who had faithfully followed the school and lived in its new premises.

Cairnhill Days
After the Occupation ended in September 1945, School reopened and we resumed our interrupted education. Since we were four years older but had missed the equivalent academic work, we had to be fitted into higher forms, depending on the results of written tests in English and Mathematics. On this basis, together with a group of other boys, we “jumped” to Standard VIII (thereby skipping two grades). This gave us about two years to prepare for the Cambridge School Certificate examination. Some of the older ones who had been in Secondary school before the war were allowed to “jump” to the School Certificate (Senior) class where they were prepared for the examination in eleven months. We in Standard VIII found many of the subjects new, with set texts for Literature, Latin, Scripture, and those requiring special study like Mechanics, History of the British Empire, Geography and, of course, English Composition and Grammar, in which a pass with credit was required for the Cambridge School Certificate. There was little time to lose, and we quickly got down to serious business.

However, it was not all work: there were a limited number of extracurricular activities such as inter-class and inter-house badminton and volley-ball, played within the School compound while other sports enthusiasts picked up skills and competitive experience in the other sports – swimming, hockey and football – at outside sports facilities. Gradually, inter-school matches resumed. There were sketches, debates, oratorical contests, community singing – all of them a pleasant and engaging change after a period devoid of such activities. Chapel was re-introduced and the Principal, Mr T.W. Hinch, who had been interned during the Occupation, duly led and encouraged us to sing with zest – which he did himself. Other teachers like Mr T.R. Doraisamy (later Bishop), Mr C.B. Paul and others, took turns. Piano accompaniment was provided by one of the boys, of whom there were a number able to do so, a tradition which continues to this day.

Junior Champion Houses in Badminton, Netball, Football, Athletics & Swimming (1938)

One of the many traditions of the School was producing a class magazine in our Senior year, called the “Senior A Herald.” Like the ACS magazine, it contained interesting and amusing articles written by the boys, and included a number of humorous and “schoolboy” anecdotes which only members of the class enjoyed. Of course, all this took time and effort, not only in collecting and editing the articles, but typing the stencils and printing them on the School’s Gestetner duplicating machine. Although the Cambridge Examination loomed, a number of our classmates pitched in and when it was finally circulated, we breathed a sigh of relief.

Was the heavy expenditure of time and effort on this project worth it? I think so: our examination results were comparable to the best before the war. This suggests an important principle – that focused study, even with a heavy extracurricular load, can do much to achieve good results. At our Senior Dinner (another of our traditions), we toasted the School for giving us an opportunity to achieve our ambitions which had been threatened by the Japanese Occupation. An important juncture in our lives had been reached, and we looked forward with anticipation to the future.