Supplementary History

History was made and unmade within two months at my school. Last term, my school became one of the first schools in Singapore to offer, ‘Supplementary History’ as a special ‘Arts Stream’ Elective subject. ‘Supplementary History’ is an extra subject for Upper Secondary students who have displayed aptitude in the basic ‘Core’ History subject. There are six girls taking ‘Supplementary History’ and our principal, Mrs. Evelyn Ng kept telling me that I should be proud to be the only Malaysian student in this class because, “Only exceptional students are allowed to study, ‘Supplementary History!”.

 

Mrs. Ng is right- in my case, she made an exception to shift me to ‘Supplementary History’ class because, according to Mr. Thomas Foo, Head of History, I was a disruptive influence during his ‘Core History’ classes. At the start of this year, Mr. Foo called me ‘insolent’ and labelled my essays ‘irreverent and impertinent’. I was only asking pertinent questions that Mr. Foo could not answer in front of the class, such as:

1.  “Mr. Foo! Since our Core History textbook is entitled, ‘A Comprehensive History of Malaya and Singapore for Upper Secondary’, why doesn’t it cover the history of Malaya and Singapore, during the Stone Age and the Iron Age?”

2.  “Mr. Foo! Why don’t we learn about the ancient Greek historian Herodotus? After all, modern historians say Herodotus is The Father of History.”

 

Or, when answering one of Mr. Foo’s generic homework essay questions, ‘What were the main reasons for the fall of Singapore in 1939 to the Japanese?’, I wrote from the point of view of a fictional British prisoner of war interred at Changi Prison during the Japanese Occupation. Mr. Foo called my essay, ‘A work of pointless invention.’, I called it, ‘A bold attempt at historical fiction’, and  Mrs. Ng called my parents in Kuala Lumpur after I called Mr. Foo, ‘An old fart.’. After a long (ten minute) discussion between Mr. Foo and Mrs. Ng, they officially decided that a bright and obviously bored student like me would be better off in the new ‘Supplementary History’, due to start the following term.

 

That was how ‘Supplementary History’ dawned on my school. How this subject destructed is unclear. Destruction is not always a sudden catastrophic event like an earthquake or when lightning strikes a tree. Rome was not built in a day but nor did Rome fall overnight. The Roman empire fell on two fronts: the Western empire in 410 A.D and the Eastern Empire succumbed to Turkish invaders 1000 years later in 1453. ‘Supplementary History’ crumbled inside and outside the classroom. Because, like Rome, its rigid structure could not face up to the shock of the new. The class was taught by a new teacher called Mr. Arthur Sutherland. Mr. Sutherland is due to return to the UK by the end of this term. I bumped into him in the corridor, and he told me that in spite of his sacking (forced resignation), he has enjoyed teaching us and we really brightened his short tenure at our school.

 

The feeling was mutual: Mr. Sutherland’s lessons were different and more interesting than Core History. He taught us that ‘history’ comes from the Greek word, ‘historia’, which means ‘inquiry- asking questions and, investigation- getting answers’, as first used by Herodotus. Mr. Sutherland even compared a historian to a crime scene investigator, reconstructing a sequence of events from all available evidence, and examining their cause and effects.

 

But inquiry is not a simple matter of asking questions and getting answers. History and forensics do not easily give up their answers, although both subjects share common methods of investigation. For example, in Forensic Facial Reconstruction, the face of a dead victim or criminal is reconstructed from a skull or facial bone fragments. This technique is also used by archaeologists, who have successfully reconstructed the faces of Egyptian mummies, such as King Tutankhamen and Nefertiti.   

During class Mr. Sutherland tried his best to put flesh and blood back on to the dry bones of History. He showed us scans of old newspaper headlines; two copies of the Straits Times, one dated 31^st August 1957, the other dated 9^th August 1965. We watched grainy black and white Second World War newsreels uploaded on Youtube, seated around Mr. Sutherland’s laptop. He gave us the first three chapters from Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf (translated into English) to read. After that lesson, Mr. Sutherland was summoned to Mr. Foo’s cramped Head Of History office. During the following lesson, Mr. Sutherland remarked that the school had reminded him to only teach the facts (and nothing but the facts) about Adolf Hitler and other dictators. With typical English sense of irony and a young teacher’s rebellious streak, Mr. Sutherland moved our class to the audio-visual room and treated us to a screening of, ‘The Last King of Scotland’. Angie Wibono grabbed the seat at the back of the room, whereas Shawna Tan and I sat in front, near the DVD player. Shawna yawned and whispered to me that she’d seen ‘The Last King Of Scotland’ already;

‘This film is a historical fiction, just like your Changi prison essay. Very entertaining but not true.’

‘Well, thank you,’ I whispered back.

Shawna Tan looked at me sideways: obviously I was missing her point.

‘It’s all about using history to create a diversion,’ and she directed my attention to the back of the activity room, where Mr. Sutherland sat next to Angie. They seemed to be huddled too close together.