School Days – How to write a perfect essay

Thanks to the drilling of Rev Br Shannon, within a few weeks our whole class gradually learnt the art of how to pen a near-perfect essay.
His instructions were clear – devote at least the first 15 minutes to gather your thoughts and recollect any small thing that would be relevant to the essay. Then plan the different parts of essay – namely, the introduction followed by the main body and then the conclusion.

The essay could be on any subject under the Sun and you must, therefore, be prepared to pen your thoughts without any hesitation. And – believe it or not – he gave us topics like ‘Keeping house when mother is ill’ or ‘the day everything went wrong.’
He would advise us to study materials apart from the school books and suggested that we browse through the daily newspapers to keep abreast of happenings around us. To him, the best newspaper for doing that in Kolkata was The Statesman – in the 1950s.
He taught us to remember to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and would always remind us to keep at least 15 minutes in hand for revision.
He was not satisfied to just issue the directives but would go on to ensure that we got addicted to the habit – on Fridays it was Essay Time. He would write the subject on the blackboard and we had to keep our pens on the desk and wait for 15 minutes before we could begin to write. (to be continued…)
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School days – I learn the nitty-gritty of the English language

Rev Br Shannon looked hard at the boy and then opened the exercise book in which the boy had written his essay. Rev Br Shannon held up the open book for all of us to see and what we saw sent shudders down our spines – the page was riddled with red marks. Right from the top to the bottom – even the margins were not spared.
The poor boy remained standing and shivering in his pants and it was then that Rev Br Shannon opened up. He began from the first red mark and went on to explain why he had put that red mark.

The mistakes ranged from the spelling of words to syntax errors and grammatical errors. He kept on explaining and we kept gobbling up each of his words. It was a real revelation to us. None of our earlier teachers had ever taken so much time or spent so much effort to go deep into the failure of each and every student and apprise him of his shortcomings. After finishing with the critical analysis of the first student, he went on the next and the process went on for the whole day – he had analyzed all 33 essays and had given his feedback as no one had ever done.
The effect of his criticism was tremendous – all of us students vowed in our minds to ensure that he did not get a chance to put his ‘red’ trademark on our essays again. And, we did achieve that near perfection but it took us a long time. (to be continued ..)
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School days – Monday, the day of reckoning!!

When I try to go back in time to that eventful day in my life, I do not remember the details but I do remember seeing Rev Br Shannon in a new light – he was a man dedicated to his cause, namely teaching. It was a day of rude awakening for not just me but for all other 32 students of the Standard-VIII Class who would be appearing for our Senior Cambridge Exams the next year.
Tradition had it that other teachers used to occupy the chair near the blackboard and maintain a certain distance between the teacher and the taught. They probably shuddered to break the invisible barrier because they suffered from a sort of superiority complex.
But – Rev Br Shannon broke all barriers and sat on the first desk right in the center facing the class. The period was in the late 1950s and the furniture was made of wood. The

were composite ones – the front portion being the desk and the rear portion, the chair. And with Rev Br Shannon sitting on the desk, the two other students got a bit squeezed. They had to grin and bear it!
He had the bunch of 33 exercise books piled up on his right side. He picked up the first one and called out the name of the student who dutifully stood up not knowing what to expect.
Till that day, the routine had been that the teacher would distribute the books and proceed to the next lesson. But – not Rev Br Shannon, he had other ideas. He rewrote the rules and the routine. (to be continued…)
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School days – A teacher who knocked off the teeth of a student

Rev Br Shannon came to our school with a bad reputation – it seems he had thrown the duster at a boy when he was in the Darjeeling unit of our school. The wooden duster hit him on the jaw and knocked out a few teeth, hence his transfer to Kolkata. I still do not know whether it was true or not but the bad reputation he had carried with him kept us in awe because he came to our class as the Teacher.
Anyway, on the first Friday, he asked us to write an essay in class. I do not remember the name of the essay but all the 33 students in the class tried their best to create a masterpiece that would woo him over.
The school was an English medium school and that had been the medium of instruction right from our KG days – therefore, all of us took care to ensure correct spellings, grammar, syntax etcetera because none of us wanted to get our teeth knocked in by a flying duster.
Well, at the end of the scheduled two hours, he collected all the 33 exercise books and carried them with him to his room.

There seemed to be the faint hint of a grin below his serious demeanor and we realized his wry sense of humor when class reassembled on Monday morning and he entered carrying with him our 33 essay books under his arm. (to be continued…)
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