I've had the good fortune of experiencing several truly gifted teachers, and he nurtured some of the cleverest minds I've known. It is liberating to meet someone who treated students like adults and appreciated challenging mental models and the possibility of dreams, like he did.
His economics lecture at the Open House excited me enough to make the switch from RGS to Hwa Chong; that was before his annual opening edict explaining his intention that, if we didn't push ourselves to work hard, there would be no nagging or safety net, our worst punishment would simply be that we'd fail. We must have all gaped at him in slight disbelief and only in hindsight, did I realize he never showered us with love and concern, but gifted us intellectual curiosity, respect and autonomy. I also remember how he asked about my Maths grade (I went from an F to an A in the 3 months after) or the class about being assembly-absent, and that if questioned by the school authorities if we had been punished — we should contritely say yes, he beat us. That made a teenage me laugh.
I remember his dancing lectures on satisficing points, his old faithful jokes about his belly being the shape of the Production Possibilities Boundary (the PPB! he bellowed), the thrill of a subject so intuitively easy to understand, his gripe that Singapore didn't teach sociology and anthropology in its syllabus because it was dangerous to have people ask critical questions, his sellotaped old car which he refused to change because his student had invented COE off his own economic theory lessons, his grouse that his French wife really got along with the locals because, the Chinese and French all think you have the best food, the oldest cultures, are the best mathematicians and engineers, and his self-deprecating flourish — you all hate the British!
RIP, to the biggest bear of a teacher. Your passing makes us all feel the end of an era and the afternoon of our lives.
