Saluting science teacher Saleh

"My boy, if your marks do not improve I will dissolve you in sulphuric acid!"

The voice in the science laboratory next to my biology class was that of the inimitable Saleh Adams. Every student who knew the man understood this great humanist lacked the capacity to hurt the proverbial fly, but right there and then the student being threatened with a corrosive chemical must have felt as if some great impending doom was upon him.

My class roared with laughter as the meaningless threat travelled through the thin walls separating our classrooms. I subdued my own laughter, careful to show respect for a colleague in the face of students, the way teachers those days used to do.

This week Adams, the greatest physical science teacher I have ever known, passed away in his home in the scenic Bokaap area of Cape Town.

Those were dark days teaching in the ruins of District Six. Most of our students' homes had been destroyed by the bulldozers of the apartheid regime. More and more children were coming from the faraway areas of the Cape Flats by train as if in defiance of their forced dislocation. Those heartless ideologues of apartheid had actually built police barracks on the grounds where historic homes of black people once stood. Thoughtless whites moved into the area as if this was the most normal thing to do. Many of our students struggled, and they had every reason to act out their anger at what we called "the system" inside the school and its impoverished classrooms.

But you were playing with your life if you thought that you could enter the physics and chemistry classroom of Mr Adams, as he was called then, and throw a political tantrum. As a young teacher, I often stood outside his classroom and peered inside to see how he managed to not only hold the attention of teenagers around something as dry as the periodic table of elements, but get them to excel in that subject every student feared. His results through the old "matric" were exceptional for mainly poor students, and the demands for his skilful teaching forced him to teach after-school classes in other parts of Cape Town.

It was, however, his manner that most caught my attention. He was always dressed immaculately, his black-grey hair flattened with precision. In class, the uncreased white lab coat came over the pressed suit during experiments; where he got all those chemicals and glass equipment was a mystery when the typical excuse of the township teacher blamed "the system" for the lack of resources.

It is hard to explain this, but the teachers of that generation spoke perfect English with the kind of flowing, measured, intellectual tone that demanded the same kind of eloquent expression from the students. The teaching plan was perfectly organised, delivery smoothly done, homework regularly assigned, feedback faithfully given, assessment records perfectly stored.

There was something Adams (and his generation) demonstrated in his life as a teacher that I will always remember: to him, teaching and activism were the same thing.

It was by teaching children well that their academic futures looked bright despite "the system".

It was by modeling professional behaviour that their respect for teachers and teaching was secured. It was by holding up high moral standards in his life that saw his students try to emulate his personal example.

And so I tried, as a young teacher, to be like Mr Adams - I could never find in it myself to call him by his first name. So I also wore a white coat. I flattened my hair. I tried to teach with flair and passion, like him. From my own pocket I bought and put to sleep rabbits and frogs for dissections. I wanted my "Bio" students to have the same laboratory experience as his "Physics" students. I threatened the innocent youngsters with my chemical of choice, chloroform. But try as I did, I knew, and my students surely knew, I could never rise to the standards of teaching and the example of living that Adams so easily expressed at Trafalgar High School.

Small wonder hundreds of people, many past students among them, flocked to his funeral this week. To some he was Imam Saleh Adams, a devout Muslim; to others he was Dr Saleh Adams, the accomplished scholar of misconceptions in science learning; to all he was Mr Saleh Adams, distinguished physical science teacher.

I salute you, Sir.