Unfounded worries

I was reading a blogger's post about a 'naughty' thing he did in school at a time when pupils were generally passive learners who did not like to ask questions.

Pupils nowadays are noisier, not afraid to ask questions, sometimes inappropriate ones and sometimes at inappropriate times. Nonetheless, they are encouraged to ask. Unlike my primary school days.....

Once upon a time, I was a kid in primary 5. One day a teacher teaching our class was being observed. We all thought it was an inspector from the education ministry. We were all very quiet. I only remember the lesson had something about clouds so I think it was either Geography or Science.

After some teaching the teacher wanted to get some feedback but no one responded or asked questions. Like that not good during observation. So the teacher decided to ask us questions instead.

"Please don't call me," we prayed. We didn't like to answer questions. We pretended to look at our books.

He called me.

"Oh no, how come call me. Why don't you call the clever ones like Victor or Ming De, sure they can give you the correct answer."

I stood up looking blur and said something. It was wrong and he asked another pupil. Later he explained the first part of the lesson again, probably for pupils like me.

For the next few days I was so scared that the teacher would punish me. You see, I couldn't answer his question, so the inspector thought his teaching no good and gave him a bad report. So he wanted to take revenge on me.

Silly boy! Of course nothing like that happened.