Robert Dudley .
' Brother Anselm introduced a system of awarding " indulgences ". Anyone who did extremely well in the weekly tests was awarded indulgences which took the form of lines which could be held to his credit . Sometimes such a credit would amount to 500 lines but unfortunately they could be erased by one single misdemeanour .
' It was a year when the teaching of religious knowledge was given high priority as it was one of the eight subjects accepted for the examinations set by the Cambridge Syndicate . We were made to learn and recite by rote the Gospel of St . Luke and Part 11of the Acts of the Apostles . Brother Anselm was a very hard task master . He had also taken over the teaching of the French Language lessons and we were given a real rough time . Lessons in French were given from 3.00 p . m . after the regular school hours and sometimes continued till about 4.30 p . m . All the hard work , however , paid off at the end of the year for we found the examination papers fairly easy . ' 1927 - Senior Cambridge Class . We had the strange experience of changing into a promoted class without changing classrooms . Our form teacher was the Rev . Brother Honorius , another Frenchman , who also took over the French Lessons . Latin was another subject added to our curriculum but under the charge of a language specialist , also of the La SalIe Order . Our La tin text book was Caesar ' s Gallic War Book 11and from this book we learnt the origin of the oft quoted saying " Veni , vidi , vici ".
' For religious knowledge , we did the Gospel of St . Matthew and Part I of the Acts of the Apostles . In other words , between 1926 and 1927 , we followed St . Paul ' s missionary journeys in the reverse order ! Brother Honorius did not insist upon the pupils learning the Gospel and the Acts by heart . However , the text book for the year was Shakespeare ' s " The Tempest " and we were not only made to memorise all the poems but also to show the metre during the recitation by tapping the table . The going was somewhat heavy and we could be excused for returning the compliment at the end of the examinations by quoting to Brother Honorius Prospero ' s last soliloquy - " We shall burn our books " .
' Another book was also prescribed for the Literature paper namely , " The Essays of Francis Bacon ". A very revealing disclosure of the knowledge and ea pabili ty of this former Lord Chancellor of England could be gathered from the sixty odd essays written by him and , in particular , his essay on simulation and dissimulation . It is not suprising that this able but devious protege of the Earl of Essex later undertook the prosecution of his erstwhile unfortunate patron .
' The year also had its light moments . The classroom next to ours was occupied by pupils of the one and only commercial class where the boys were taught shorthand and typewriting . Students who passed Standard vn were eligible to join this class if they decided against proceeding to the Cambridge classes . The teacher was a boisterous American La Salle Brother whose name escapes me at the moment . He was a big man who sported a rather pronounced American accent and was given the same nickname which used to be applied to the American Wild West Indian Scou t known as Bill Cod y . Brother " Bill " used to cond uct his typing class with a gramophone for keeping time and the music from this gramophone was the cause of great annoyance to Brother Honorius as it interfered with the teaching in our class . A complaint was lodged by Brother Honorius , which was met with a counter-complaint against our Class for being very noisy because the pupils used to laugh aloud whenever Brother Honorius cracked a joke . The two Rev . Brothers eventually came to terms by each promising to keep down the level of noise from their respective classes and peace was res- tored ! There was no volume control in those oldfashioned gramophones and I wondered how Brother " Bill " managed it . Perhaps it was done by turning the horn in the direction away from our class or stuffing some rag in the horn .
' Before ending my reminiscences for 1927 , I m ust make men tion of the special Religious Knowledge examinations held in November . These examinations were set for the Senior Classes of the Brothers ' Schools in Singapore , Seremban , Kuala Lumpur , Ipoh , Taiping and Penang . They consisted of four papers , namely , Christian Doctrine , Bible History , Church History and Ca techism . The whole class sat for these examinations and thirty gold medals were awarded . Our class in that year not only obtained half a dozen gold medals but also scored the 3rd place , for which $ 50 / - worth of books were awarded . The winner of tha t prize was myoid friend , Koh Cheng Yam , who found himself the proud owner of a miniature library .
' As the subjects taught in school were somewhat different from those taught in the " 0 " Level classes , it might be of some interest to set out the eight subjects which most of us chose for the Senior Cambridge Examinations , viz : -
( 1 ) Religious knowledge . ( 2 ) English . ( 3 ) Mathematics . ( 4 ) History . ( 5 ) Geography . ( 6 ) French . ( 7 ) La tin . ( 8 ) Li tera ture .
' It was an all-round Arts Course which provided a plank for matriculation in the classic stream . The Science Course was not available at SJI and in those days only Raffles ' Institution conducted a course in Physics and Chemistry .
SI ! Cadet Corps Officers and NCOs in about 1932 . Front row , left to right , GuyMachado , S . P . Navanam , C . V . I . Reutens , unknown Staff Officer , Reverend Brother Stephen Edward ( Director ), A . W . [ ansen , LimChooSye , Ngui [ im Chiang . The cadets are first mentioned as forming a Guard of Honor at the open ing of the Anderson building in 1907 .
26 Memories ofSll