Dominic Chua The Time Machine
Back row , on the right : Mrs Jeanne Marie Ho
Mrs Lim Jee Nee
The Lost Boys
So after that , April Fools ’ Day became something of a tradition during which RI teachers would prank their students , with the only criteria being that it had to be an intelligent joke . In 1992 , Ms Jeanne Marie Ho and I — both English Literature teachers — came up with a prank around the Secondary 2 boys ’ literature text , William Golding ’ s Lord of the Flies in class .
The story we spun was that William Golding , a teacher ( he really was a teacher ) had brought a group of boys out to an island ( we invented one ). In our version of history , William Golding was inexplicably separated from his class for a full day , and this incident formed the inspiration for the writing of Lord of the Flies . And so we told our classes to do research — to find out what actually happened to Golding ’ s students during that one day .
We planned it so well , you know . We found an academic journal in the library , typed out a page in a font that more or less resembled that used in the journal , inserted the page inside the book — it contained a fictitious story , and at the end of it , a wish for a Happy April Fools ’.
And the boys were so good — when they realised that it was a joke , they replied in kind , in the most creative ways . Their reports ( because we had asked for the research to be submitted ) came in the form of shape poems ( one boy wrote a shape poem in the shape of a circle ) and limericks , others used mathematical equations ( if this then that , and there was something about shear forces !), and yet another boy came up with a pretty inventive story about the island sitting on some continental plate and how plate movement produced an earthquake ( that led to Golding being separated from his students ). The boys applied what they ’ d been learning about in other disciplines , and that was fantastic and really rewarding for us as teachers .
Rafflesian Times
26
And the boys were so good — when they realised that it was a joke , they replied in kind , in the most creative ways .