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.