S$30 Iron Fist

It cannot be any more real than that Alanis Morissette song. It is like an anthem or something.

I’ve actually punched an overnight parking coupon but I got a $30 summon too.

It was so unexpected that it is still laughable 17h after discovering that ticket on my windscreen when I was driving. The origami skill of the parking warden was terrific and it stayed clipped and flapping against the windscreen till I reached school.

I think I won’t mind paying the “composition fine”, because my essays are fine. But seriously, it was my careless mistake anyway.

When I returned home just now, I saw them staking out and I stalked them for a while. I wasn’t intending to do so but I was disturbed that one of them looked pissed as if I had intentionally flashed my headlights at her when it was not so. Totally irrational but I was curious anyway. Of course it was a fruitful observation and I learnt something new.

What do you see? What do you see?

Unfortunately or fortunately, I wasn’t sure of their nationality still because I don’t want to feel like a deracinated foreigner in my own country. It is certainly psychological as much as it is a sense of pride in being a citizen. Probably irrational.

Sometimes the most brilliant talks irrationally. We’re not even talking about Eric Cantona and his seagulls.

GB Shaw’s famous quip about professions was well met by an essay from Janadas Devan on Jul 26, 2009 in the Straits Times; I reproduce it here for posterity (http://news.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20090728-157522.html):

Great teachers in a class of their own

‘He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.’

That has to be among the silliest things that George Bernard Shaw ever wrote. He didn’t originate the jibe – its usual form goes ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’ – but he certainly contributed to its wide dissemination.

The truth of the matter is that teaching entails as much ‘doing’ as any other profession; indeed, it probably demands more from a person than most other jobs.

Consider how few exceptional teachers most of us have had in the course of our educational careers. Most of us would have had at least 12 years of schooling and some would have had an additional four years of university. In the course of those years, each of us would have been lectured, tutored or supervised by at least 100, if not more, teachers. Many, if not most, of them would have been competent; some would have been good. But how many would have been truly exceptional?

I can name only three among the 150 or so teachers I have been taught by over the course of my own educational career: My Primary 6 teacher, Mrs Ernest Lau at Anglo-Chinese School; Professor Koh Tai Ann at the University of Singapore; and the Shakespearean Prof Scott McMillan at Cornell University. I was fortunate to have had many more good teachers, some of them distinguished scholars, but these three stood out qua teachers.

I have come across many more exceptional doctors, though I’m certain I have been treated by far fewer than 150 doctors in my life. I have had personal contact with many more exceptional public ser-vants, lawyers, corporate executives, scholars, journalists – even plumbers.

Truly exceptional teachers, at whatever level – primary or secondary school, undergraduate or post-graduate – are rarer than exceptional doctors or lawyers. That is so not because the profession is filled with people who cannot ‘do’. On the contrary, it is so because teaching – exceptional teaching – involves a rare order of doing.

You cannot convey values by just reciting them. An exceptional teacher conveys them by example, by osmosis almost, from every fibre of her being, even in her speech and gesture – like the late Mrs Lau.

You cannot teach a method of analysis merely by detailing its procedure. An exceptional teacher reveals the power of a method, an approach or a discipline, by herself becoming its instrument – like Prof Koh.

You cannot convey a love for a subject by insisting mechanically on its attributes. An exceptional teacher communicates through the sincerity of his interests, the genuineness of his enthusiasms, the disinterestedness of his scholarship – like the late Prof McMillan.

Bad teachers insist; good teachers show; exceptional teachers are. The reason the last are rare is that the most important things in any subject, as in life, cannot be taught explicitly. They can only be embodied as examples – in the teachers themselves.

Take, for instance, writing: How does one teach good writing? I conducted a column writing course for some journalists recently and had to grapple with this question.

One can go through lists of the things one should or should not do in writing. Every primer on writing provides such lists. Strunk and White’s Elements Of Style, for instance, has a list of 21 ‘suggestions and cautionary hints’, from ‘Place yourself in the background’ and ‘Write with nouns and verbs’ to ‘Avoid fancy words’ and ‘Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity’. Such lists are useful – as far as they go.

Most bad writing is the result of writers not having thought through what they want to say. So they proceed by flinging a mass of words in the general vicinity of their vaguely apprehended intended meaning, in the hope of somehow hitting the target. Lists of dos and don’ts can help writers to be more conscious of their writing. Like the advice to take a deep breath when you are tempted to do something hasty in anger, lists can slow you down, force you to take stock. A competent teacher can, by using such lists, encourage students to be self-reflective.

A better way would be to show what constitutes good writing. There is no good writer who is not also a good – and extensive – reader. That being so, just reading examples of exceptionally good writing and analysing why they are good can do a world of wonders.

‘These are the times that try men’s souls’ – just eight short words, forming a simple declarative sentence, as Strunk and White note. What if Thomas Paine had written instead ‘Times like these try men’s souls’ or ‘How trying it is to live in these times!’ – or, heaven forbid, ‘Soulwise, these are trying times’? Each is a grammatical sentence but none carries the distinctive signature the original does, even more than 200 years later. Why is that so?

Yes, a competent teacher of writing can convey a great deal of information about good writing by telling, by showing, by analysing, even by admonishing. But at the heart of good writing, there is a mystery that cannot be conveyed by instruction.

‘The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.’

George Orwell wrote that in his famous Politics And The English Language, an essay I used in my recent course on writing. I realised that was the heart of the essay, the distillation of Orwell’s wisdom on the subject – and I did not have a clue as to how I might convey its tremendous truth: ‘The great enemy of clear writing is insincerity.’ Only someone as sincere as Orwell, I finally realised, only someone who exemplifies such sincerity in his own writing, can teach sincerity.

Those who can, do; those who are, teach – without intending to do so.

With that kind of yardstick, it becomes difficult for anything–Technology included–but a real teacher to be a teacher.

But of course there is always ingratia around us, or those who half-learn all that they think they ought to learn or nothing at all.

A friend brought my attention to a controversial blog written by an alumnus of the college and of a prestigious High School which I was originally posted to in 2007. It was a ridicule of the department that I hold dear and misrepresentation of comments taken out of context. I’ve checked it out and I am sure he can be sued for libel if we so wish, but I’ve no idea what the college is doing about this. Well, to be fair, he seems to have gone through a paradigm shift since then and we can tell from his post on how now he no longer would discriminate against the poor and the uneducated in Singapore.

Sometimes life isn’t fair and it may seem that the haves have it easier, going unpunished with crimes.

Here’s what Rob Hughes has to say (July 26, 2009):

What if Stevie G were a bricklayer instead?

As Steven Gerrard left Liverpool Crown Court on Friday, a free man with his reputation intact according to the British jury system, someone in the motley crowd of hero worshippers outside called out: ‘Come on, Rocky.’

That reference to the Sylvester Stallone street fighter character, followed Gerrard’s admission under oath that he had landed three punches at the head of a bar room disc jockey Marcus McGee that were described ‘as fast as a professional boxer rather than a professional footballer.’

Never mind the seven women and five men of the jury, anyone with access to the Internet from Merseyside to Timbuktu has made their own judgement on Gerrard’s punching power during the brawl last December.

The trial in Liverpool was the reason why Gerrard isn’t available to play in Singapore today. He pleaded not guilty to affray and the jury in his home city accepted his defence that he hit out in self defence.

On hearing the verdict, my thoughts flashed back to Los Angeles in 1995 where a jury cleared O. J. Simpson of murdering his wife and a male visitor in his home.

‘If Stevie G was Steven Smith, a bricklayer from Everton, would he be eating beans in a Liverpool jail now?’ came a question from Singapore to me via e-mail.

The inference, I must point out, was coloured by the fact that the sender is a self-confessed Evertonian.

He makes an insinuation, but also poses a valid question.

Is the jury system susceptible to the celebrity culture which, for better or for worse, we have in modern society?

A glib response to that – and to the many hundreds of twitters bouncing around the Internet suggesting that no Liverpool jury was ever going to convict the captain of Liverpool FC – is that they are wrong.

What if the jury had been predominantly blue? What if Liverpudlians and Evertonians in that jury room had come to blows over the hero/villain whom Gerrard represents in that fevered football city?

We have to presume that Judge Henry Globe QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, is the pillar of neutrality. And the judge summed up: ‘The verdict is a credible verdict on the full facts of this case.’

Turning to Gerrard, he said: ‘You did not start the violence. It was started by a violent elbowing of the victim, Mr McGee, in the face by one of your friends.

‘What at first sight to the casual observer may seem to have been a clear-cut case against you of unlawful violence, has been nowhere near as clear-cut upon careful analysis of the evidence.

‘You walk away from this court with your reputation intact.’

Walk on, Rocky.

By coincidence, as Gerrard walked free, so did the singer Amy Winehouse. She left a separate court, in London, on Friday, acquitted of punching a fan who got too close at a concert last year.

There are disturbing aspects to society’s attitudes towards the famous, and to the inevitable fact that the stars can afford the top lawyers, some of whom have become the highest-paid groupies of all.

Gerrard pleaded not guilty to affray. Five of his mates caught up in that same brawl have neither the resources, nor the reputation, to defend. They, including the man who elbowed McGee before Gerrard threw the uppercuts, pleaded guilty to affray.

They face sentencing on Aug 7. They could be jailed for up to three years. And they could claim that they are taking the rap for a friend.

Gerrard’s counsel, meanwhile, obtained full repayment from the court for the player’s legal costs.

From the Mandarin Oriental, Gerrard’s boss Rafa Benitez spoke about everyone’s relief.

‘Now, Steven can concentrate just on football,’ said Benitez. ‘And hopefully play at the same level as last year.’

The club had shown its own act of faith three days earlier when it extended Gerrard’s £120,000 (S$284,048) per-week contract for two extra years to 2013.

He will be 33 by then. With luck, he will use his strength, his determination, his striking ability to lead his team the way he had a few hours before the fracas last December. Liverpool had thrashed Newcastle United 5-1 away from home, and Gerrard had landed two powerful shots on goal.

Few can doubt that when Stevie G is on the pitch, he’s a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, he has captained England, though he stands right now third in line after those two other paragons John Terry and Rio Ferdinand.

All three have engaged M’Learned Friends in defence of their reputations for off-duty incidents. And this weekend, even the elder citizen of fame, David Beckham, has had to be disciplined.

He felt the mighty thwack of a US$1,000 (S$1,440) fine for picking a fight with an LA Galaxy fan who had the temerity to boo him at the Home Depot Center.

When it comes down to it, who can the superstars trust in this life?

England’s Daily Mail yesterday headlined its coverage: ‘Brawler Gerrard Cleared.’ It told of the acquittal and of the mean streets of the Bluebell Estate where Gerrard and his drinking pals came from.

The photographs showed a grey-suited Gerrard leaving the court, side by side with his model wife, Alex Curran, dressed in a fashion walk pink number. Rather like a trio of combination punches, the photographic compilation deceived the eye.

Mrs G. did not wear that sexy outfit to the Crown Court. It was a stock picture from a fashion shoot.

Likewise I’ve always said, those good in the language can get away with murder, figuratively. Don’t misquote Mr K and say on your blog that Mr K is breeding murderers.

Here’s more help for those in need; we’re not elitist. You’ll never walk alone… http://www.brainpop.com/english/grammar/clauses/