It was weird. Rick, my former PhD advisor and an established scholar, quit academia and was running a shop. I forget what he sold. He welcomed me with open arms, chatted with me briefly, and walked away. He had another customer to serve.
Just as I turned around, my eyes met with Henrietta, my college Literature teacher. We had been close; we had emailed each other outside of the class. We’d had lunch together at times with another colleague, a Linguistics teacher. I thought about them from time to time, although we hadn’t been in touch since I left the college, finished my MA and PhD, and started working as a college lecturer too.
“Hi, Henrietta,” I said with a big smile, thinking that she might be just as delighted to see me in a random place.
“Hello, Eric,” Henrietta feigned a smile, and gave a furtive glance at somewhere between my chin and chest.
“And uh, if you don’t mind, please call me Ms Leung,” she said, dodging my confused stare at her, and slowly slipped off and exited the shop.
Before I was able to react, I woke up.
It was just a dream. It’s just that the dream triggered my teenage memories about the secondary school I went to. These memories kind of shaped how I look at teaching in secondary schools, and who I am as the one striving upward from a “fail” student to where I am right now.
Perhaps the dream was a trauma concealed deeply in my subconsciousness. Perhaps I was also jealous of Wen writing about having inspiring teachers, so I decided to write something about less inspiring ones.
Bullied by Students
My secondary school was a boys’ school, but there were a couple of girls in the senior form (Secondary Six and Seven). I experienced what abandonment was really like at this school.
I went through the first generation of cyberbullying. Back then, there was some online forum called a “news group”. I forget the details of those name-calling messages and parodies written just to mock me. I didn’t start those fights, although I did fight back – at my age, all I could do was call names, just like them.
However hard I tried to numb my senses, I would still feel so intimidated when they picked on me for no reason. Whether in the news group or in the hallways. “In the coming swim meet, Peter, Tom, and I are going to fucking kill you.” A schoolmate from the swim team hissed at me right outside the classroom. I just wanted to have fun in a race. But I ended up being absent from the swim meet.
I thought that, in moments like these, I could rely on teachers as beacons to show me the way out. I expected that they were wise enough, and I could listen to them.
But when I went to school and told my teachers, they advised me to stop fighting back in the news group. They didn’t have any other advice for me. Why weren’t they on my side? Did they think it was right for me to get bullied? Or were they just saying things endorsed by people higher up?
Bullied by Gossiping Teachers
Very soon, some teachers gossiped behind my back. I thought they would either talk me into focusing on my study, or offer advice to me on dealing with bullying or relationship issues. I expected them to teach me about life aside from just subjects. But no, they couldn’t care less.
When they saw me, they stayed silent. To them, I was a troublemaker. A bad seed to be weeded out. I felt “dehumanised”: I was just a topic they enjoyed talking about or commenting on, like a piece of entertainment news.
I wasn’t visibly injured, because the attacks were invisible; but my wounds were there. And still there weren’t many people I could talk to. In the fifth form, everyone had to worry about themselves: the imminent public exam, which determined who we’d become in the future, or so we thought.
Where were the teachers? They were there when they were ready to talk behind my back, eat some popcorn, or just ignore me and say: “I told you so”. Some fucking wise sages. As time went by, I felt increasingly alienated; I was besieged by both schoolmates and teachers.
Discouraging Teachers
When I sincerely asked for advice on my study, they were nothing but discouraging, if not mean.
I often joke that I chose English because I’m so poor in Math. I could use a calculator and do quadratic equations, but I wasn’t good enough to use that to get to medical school. Days before the HKCEE, my class did a mock exam and got our scores instantly. I took my paper to the teacher and asked, “what grade do you think I would get with this?”
He said without looking sorry, “a lower C band at best. Very likely a D.” Nor did he tell me how to increase the odds of scoring higher. Fair enough; I asked for his evaluation. Finally, I gritted my teeth and earned a higher C grade. But still, I wasn’t able to attend medical school.
The day I received my result slip was the moment I realised I had finally become invisible, just like those old wounds that my “alma mater” didn’t care to nurse. My teachers congratulated the straight-A students. They consoled the worse performers and helped them find other schools. But I was all on my own, staring at my result slip blankly.
I felt trapped by invisible walls, couldn’t hear clearly, and was catching my breath. I left the school auditorium quietly and miserably. Fearing that they would see the desperation on my face. I wouldn’t let them win.
I was abandoned by my “mother school”. “Mater” in “alma mater” means “mother”; at that moment, I felt this mother finally consider I was too bad to stay with her. At a “home” where I was no longer welcomed.
Forgetful Alma Mater
We have a tradition: after we graduate, we are to pay visits to our alma mater, and show gratitude and appreciation to our teachers. To show that we have never forgotten who nurtured us to become who we are now. This reflects our Chinese value, inscribed in the saying “remember the source from which you drink the water” (飲水思源).
But the source of your drinking water never remembers you.
I went back once or twice, four or five years after I graduated, just to be satiated with nostalgia. Except for my Art teacher, none of the teachers cared to say hi. Not even my headteacher, who had spent two years with us before the public exam.
So, nine times out of ten, you are forgotten. Unless you got straight A’s and earned a place at a prestige university, from home or abroad. Unless you were an elite athlete. Or you earned awards here and there. Unless you deserved to be remembered. Unless you were newsworthy.
Maybe this was just my personal experience. Maybe it only happened to me. It’s okay to be forgotten, but it’s never okay for a student to be bullied or treated with indifference by teachers, whom we expect to trust. This experience was personal, but I hope such an experience will never happen to other students. And I can’t imagine that, if they were treating me this way, that they weren’t treating others this way as well.
Looking on the Bright Side
It has been over twenty years since I left my alma mater, but I am still resentful of the teachers I met. I can spare those who won’t remember their students. When teachers have taught thousands of students throughout their teaching career, it’s definitely easier for students to remember them than for them to remember us.
But I will never forgive those who refused to help, Who brought students down, or made us feel small. They should have felt fortunate that their desperate student didn’t do anything crazy at school. In Hong Kong, teenage suicide and self-sabotage rates have risen in recent years. One may factor in stress arising from homework and exams, and pressure from peers and parents, teachers’ indifference may also worsen the situation. Sometimes I would wonder how things would have been different if my teachers had been more supportive and empathetic. Now I am a teacher myself. And the last thing I want, as a teacher, and an adult, is to be like them.
I promise myself: I might be forgetful, but I will never talk dirty behind my students’ backs; nor will I be indifferent.
