Confucius's birthday is celebrated every year on September 28th as Teacher's Day. Confucius is the most renowned teacher in Chinese culture, if not the world, and students in Taiwan are required to learn his sayings by heart. It is a sign of the high regard in which teachers are held that a day is set aside each year to honour them. I was honoured this year by receiving three cards, a bag of apples, a six-pack of Coke Light, a beautiful lantern candleholder, being sprayed with some kind of party gunk and having my students devise various ways of preventing me from actually teaching them anything!

There are a number of memorable teachers I had. Miss Butler, my Grade 1 teacher, who got me started on the right schooling foot. My Grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Saunders, who made us find pictures of everything she taught us and because of whom I didn't eat tomato sauce for years, because she taught us that it was unhealthy. It was she who sparked my interest in the Far East, by inviting us to her home to see her Japanese things after a trip she had made there.

My Grade 5 teacher, Mr. Van der Walt, a towering man who never beat me for doing badly on a test, excusing my poor marks by saying that it was because the test was in Afrikaans. Mr. Stead, my Grade 7 teacher, who was very very tall, but as gentle as a lamb and went off to become a missionary. I wept when he said goodbye to us.

Mrs. Schutte, my Grade 11 and 12 History teacher, who made history come alive and made me a life long history student. Mrs. Tucker, who spoke English as if it was precious and saw in me more than the mediocre English student I believed myself to be. Both these teachers made me the English and History teacher I am today. Mr. Minnaar, my Grade 10-12 Guidance teacher, who helped me realize that I wanted to be a teacher. And to become a teacher like him.

Ann Smith, the university English teacher who made me realize that being conventional was not acceptable, that my thoughts and feelings are as valid and important, and at times even more so, than those imposed by a controlling society and its structures.

And then there's Mrs. Heyns, my Grade 11 and 12 Afrikaans teacher, who would die of shock if she knew I was a teacher.

28 September 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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