11 Things I Have Learned in Wah Yan College Kowloon from 1955 to 1963
Yu Fong-ying (‘61 grad)
I wouldn’t say that everything I’ve learned I learned in Wah Yan College Kowloon. It is patently not true.
I learned a lot in the three years post-Wah Yan, in university. I acquired the skill of organizing functions. I learned the joys and heartbreaks of adolescent love. I learned teaching to a class up-front while an undergraduate. I began to map out the wide terrain of English where I was to be a teacher for over 45 years. After graduation from university, I learned politics and teaching skills and the meaning of love and parenthood. These lessons were learned after Wah Yan, in the natural course of leaving school and growing into manhood, teacher-hood, fatherhood and citizen-hood.
And there are things I had not learned in Wah Yan which I would like to have learned.
I had to work out my relationship with China. That lacuna was due to a number of reasons: colonialism, the official Chinese history syllabus which stopped at the founding of the Republic in 1911, the particular time in the development of Hong Kong and China, the absence of any political discussion due to the education code, and finally, the anti-communist stand of the Catholic Church.
I wish there had been more teaching of critical thinking. I do not recall many subjects and the ways they were taught as enlarging my critical faculty. I wish too that the curriculum had included some trade handicraft like carpentry, painting walls and fixing the toilet.
If I had entered a co-educational school, I might have had an opportunity to begin to learn to define my relationship with the opposite sex as fellow students. As it was, it was only in university that I found female students side by side with me. I was studying English, a course in which young women outnumbered young men by 4 to 1. Having no previous dealings with girls, I found it awkward to form mutually enhancing friendship with them, and I was the worse for being innocent of the nature of tender care and attachment to the opposite sex.
But the lessons I did learn in Wah Yan have served me to this day. I would like to shape them into premisses and explain them, a half century later. They have proved their worth; I will hold onto them for dear life.
I shall call them up in no particular order.
1. I learned social equality in school, equality of standing and opportunity regardless of origin and family background.
The school fell into the category called the “grant-in-aid” schools. Subsidized by the government, it yet retained a good measure of independence. The students came from all social classes and diverse backgrounds. After a public examination, I got into Wah Yan from a Chinese primary school with the help of a letter of recommendation from the principal of my primary school, Sister Ngai, to Fr. Toner, the principal of Wah Yan. Some very rich students might have got in at the discretion of the authority, but the families of the majority of students represented a spectrum from the poor, to the average, to the well-heeled. There was a scheme of subsidizing needy students. I can count classmates who came from Shamshiupo, Mongkok, Yaumati, Tsimshatui, as well as the mid-levels on Hong Kong Island. Once in, their family background played little or no part in influencing the policy and day-to-day running of the school, or the teachers’ treatment of the students. Poverty of course was still a limiting factor, but there were many clubs and opportunities that were free. I benefited from opportunities to play football, and learn about classical music from my more affluent and not so affluent friends, free just like the lunch time concerts organized by Mr. Alexander Wong and Mr. Wilson Hsueh, the music teachers. Some of the most outstanding students -- in academics, sports, leadership and sociability -- came from ordinary or poor families.
2. I learned that an individual’s talent and merit count.
Individual talents and proven merits would distinguish a student if he exerted himself. Talents and merits came in many forms, not just studiousness. There was a wide variety of clubs in which students could shine. Sports of course topped the list, then there were scouting, debating, drama, writing. Religion gave scope to the spiritually-inclined and there were social services one could join. There was competition but not mean jealous competition. We all rejoiced in the success of the school teams whether in sports or inter-school competitions. Good students in different fields got respect from their peers.
3. I learned the importance of the environment that constitutes a good school.
To us, school was not just a place of learning. The green fields and spacious campus of Wah Yan, in the middle of densely populated Mongkok, were an oasis, the envy of many a passer-by. Playing in those fields or just on their margins was a huge part of schooling. The school was also a refuge, well into the late afternoons, for students like me to whom home was a cramped or mirthless place. The school was a second home to me for eight years, and for some others too. I learned the pride of belonging to such a place: it was first of all a place of learning, then a place of fun and friends. At the same time, the school had strict discipline. Prefect of Studies Fr. Francis Chan was appointed by Fr. Dargan who commended him for being “very successful in improving discipline.” [1] Discipline blended naturally with teaching and learning and school life. There were academic standards to be met; those not up to them had to repeat or leave. I repeated primary 6 to learn sufficient English to use it as a medium of learning.
4. I learned that the dedication and kindness of teachers can induce a willingness in students to learn and to improve.
The teachers went about their business in a calm unhurried way, up and down the stairs, in and out of the classrooms. I remember them all as dedicated teachers. We were expected to do our part, and we submitted to meeting that expectation. Some teachers’ and fathers’ acts of kindness have passed into folklore. Fr. Moran, Fr. Mallin, Fr. O’Neill, Fr. Sullivan, to name just some whose path I crossed – their character, eccentricity, warmth and acts of generosity stayed in students’ memories long after they left school. Fr. Sullivan could well be one of those at whom Fr. Dargan directed this stricture: “Many Fathers, in a commendable effort to be good friends of the boys, are too soft and too easily let pass serious infringements of discipline and lack of respect to authority.” [1] Fr. Sullivan let the wings of his robe be tied or pulled by boys and then offered them sweets. But what such an act said to a Chinese boy in a colony where foreigners ruled! What respect of a different kind, one mingled with mischief, lurked behind the boys’ frivolity! I still remember Fr. Sullivan, my F. 3 form master, with fondness. Miss Wong Kit Kwan, the primary 6D mistress, advised me to apply for a bursary when I failed to produce the school fee on the first day of the month. Mr. Patrick O’Flanagan, English Literature teacher, besides subsidizing my book-buying at university, discussed literature with me by correspondence throughout my university days.
5. I learned English language proficiency and western culture.
The English-medium school with the Irish fathers and teachers whose English was a model provided the environment for English to grow in us. The clubs, usually led by a father, were other avenues of “immersion.” The official language of school functions and administration, circulars, teaching, subjects and textbooks and notes and tests made the use of English in many settings obligatory. Western culture was instilled in us through the subjects, e.g. Biblical Knowledge, Music (where a mix of English and Chinese folksongs were taught as well as musical terms), History, Geography. The literature portion of English as well as the subject English Literature in the sixth forms introduced some English (e.g. Alcott, Austen) and Scottish (e.g. Doyle, Stevenson) classics to us. Poetry brought us into contact with English (e.g. Milton, Lear), Scottish (e.g. Burns), and Irish (e.g.Yeats) characters and temperaments.
6. I learned that English is more than the language of the English or England.
Wah Yan was run by priests who came mostly from Ireland; to that extent Irishness was an influence in the school, a somewhat subtle one. English was not just England, though the Chinese teachers of English spoke in the R.P. accent. The history we learned was European history rather than English history. Geography taught us something about the whole world. Yeats’ poetry is as Irish as you can get. Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and his poetry were read. Many years later, when I went to Scotland, England (with a detour to Dublin), and Canada, I felt quite at home in their lay. But I was equally aware of the differences among them and between them and me.
7. I learned Chinese language and culture.
Though an English school, there was no rule forbidding the use of Chinese outside the classroom; students did not feel pressed to converse in English with each other. Graduating from a Chinese primary school, I was interested in the subjects Chinese and Chinese History. I was taught by at least five excellent Chinese teachers in various forms. In the sixth forms, I had the good fortune to come under the teaching of a noted scholar of Classical Chinese, Mr. So Man Chok. His erudition and his encouragement consolidated and spurred my appreciation of Chinese. A banker classmate can easily recite to us today the lyrics of Su Dong-po’s Prelude to Water Music 水調歌頭 (明月幾時有…). That is not unusual among us. The Chinese subjects linked us to traditional Chinese culture inseparably, for life.
8. I learned that friends are precious and that many parents are kind.
I made some life-long friends in Wah Yan. The ’61 grads are still a cohesive group, due to the devotion of a few enthusiastic classmates and gratitude to the school. There have been numerous reunions in this place or that. A few classmates devoted themselves to keeping the links alive among us and between us and past teachers and fathers (alas the number diminishing year after year). In the golden jubilee reunion in Hong Kong in 2011, as many as 47 schoolmates turned up. Within the cohort, some classmates of course formed closer circles. I too have had a closer circle of friends and the wider circle of the cohort. Throughout my school days, some friends generously led me into the circle of classical music lovers. Some I played football and ping-pong with everyday and went to outings with occasionally. They were role models in different ways, and I admired them and followed their good behaviour. We have kept in touch, forging a bond both trustful and joyful. The parents of some of my closer friends treated me kindly. Dr. Wong Shing-hang treated me for a chronic illness in addition to the government clinic; Auntie Wong gave me shots of vitamins. I was welcome into the homes of my closer friends.
9. I learned to love football and music and to appreciate art.
Both of these pursuits, football and music, are life-long interests and do not cost much. They began in the first years of Wah Yan. I gave up playing football a long time ago; I was never good at it. But in my daily walks, I still see the benefit of having played football: my steps are firm and my body balanced, the result of years of playing. Music I have never given up, and enjoy a range, from classical music to Cantonese operatic songs and English folk songs and pop songs. I have a long-standing interest in visual art both western and Chinese, initiated in Form 1 by Mr. Laurence Tam.
10. I learned to have a spiritual dimension and a moral sense and to respect religious tolerance.
Wah Yan was and is a Catholic school. The Society of Jesus’ mission was to evangelize and to educate. I am not a Catholic but I am glad to have learned an important source of western civilization, and I thank the fathers for the religious tolerance shown. We were taught the Bible, urged to learn catechism and go to mass, but we were never forced to become Catholics either overtly or covertly. As a result, perhaps ironically, I have retained an affinity with and a respect for Christianity, especially Catholicism. And have taken heed of some of the biblical teachings in my conduct, while remaining curious about some aspects of the theology. The influence of Chinese, with a study of some of the works of Confucius, Zhuangzi and major literary writers, needs no elaboration.
11. I learned that under the right conditions, East and West can fuse in a meaningful way.
My outlook on life is the product of a fusion of Christianity and various elements of Chinese schools of philosophy, both parts learned first in school. That I can draw from both East and West is due to the balanced education I received. Knowledge of the West in an English-medium education was balanced by the teaching of Chinese subjects by teachers who were inspiring and well respected. Of course, family and society, customs and traditions, played a part too.
How have these lessons and knowledge continued to sustain and enrich my life? Let me count the ways. I have mentioned the firm steps and balanced gait in walking and the enjoyment of music and visual art. English and English Literature led me to my profession, religion and fusion of East and West my identity. The habit of reading is a legacy of schooling; so is an abiding interest in the English and Chinese languages. I have taken to trying my hand at writing in both. “In vacant or in pensive mood” during life’s ebbing moments, fragments of Chinese and English teachings and literary works or a musical refrain would pop up and be “the bliss of solitude” [2]. Likewise, on life’s high or festive occasions, music and poetry would cheer me on. Social equality and the belief in self-improvement are constituents of my outlook. As well, I try to walk the path of kindness.
After all, eleven is a somewhat arbitrary number; I could have sliced the memories and experiences, re-grouped, and come up with another figure. This is only an account of one man’s debt to his school based on fading memories. I think I have covered the major strands, and I hope that the account, rosy though it might be, is not blinkered. For the things I have learned, I am truly thankful.
January 2013
Notes
[1] Jesuits in Hong Kong, South China and Beyond by Thomas J. Morrissey, S.J., 2008, p. 393.
[2] “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” by William Wordsworth.