Tickey de Jager Room speech 1 March 2011 - Rondebosch Boys

Speech delivered by Mike Reeler, President of the Old Boys’ Union, at the
opening of the Tickey de Jager Mathematics Room on 1 March 2011.
OPENING OF THE “TICKEY” DE JAGER MATHEMATICS ROOM
1 MARCH 2011
May I add my own personal words of welcome to all present and to say how honoured I feel to have
been invited to perform this very important task. Also how very good it is to have Marianne de Jager
and David with us and to say how sad it is that Anne could not be here, but New Zealand is a very long
way away.
In June of 1920, a son was born to an impoverished farmer and his wife in a forgotten and desolate
part of the Northern Cape. He was christened Cornelis Janse, but for the major part of his life was
known affectionately by all who came into contact with him, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and
even schoolboys (although never to his face!) as Tickey.
Although his beginning was a very humble one in a home that had no electricity or running water and
where new clothes were a seldom-experienced luxury and soap had to be manufactured from animal
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fat, it must have been a most enriching experience, for from it grew a man who had a remarkable
career. Tickey himself acknowledged the enormous influence of his mother and father and the role
they played in his subsequent development. There was no school for him and his brother to attend so
his mother undertook the task of teaching the two boys. Tickey once wrote a letter to his, then, 9-
year-old granddaughter, Megan, in New Zealand, where he tried to explain to her what it was like
during the first 9 years of his life and he had this to say, amongst other things, of his father:
Because we were alone on a farm I spent nearly all my time with my father. My mother was
trained as a teacher, but my father was a born teacher. He had a gift for making things clear
and memorable. I still find south by using the Southern Cross and its pointers in the way he
showed me one beautiful starry night. But it is not so much that he taught me so that I knew
things; he taught me in a way that made me want to know things. The things you learn you
may forget, but curiosity, the habit of wanting to know, lasts. He taught me arithmetic, and
above all that in arithmetic you must know why you do things in the way you do. Why do you
add from the right? I even learnt my first geometry from him. I was holding iron poles for him
to drive into the ground with a fourteen pound sledge hammer to make a fence. As I was
holding the second pole I asked him: "Dad, are you sure that this pole is in line with that pole.?"
He looked down at me from the locust poison drum he was standing on: "Luister, twee pale is
altyd in 'n lyn. Two poles are always in a line. Always. Everywhere. Amazing.
I marvelled at this revelation for days.
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Tickey’s career at Rondebosch began in 1945 after teaching in various schools, was interrupted for a
7-year spell at Maitland High School, and then proceeded continuously from 1952 until he retired at
the end of 1985. I came to know him first in October of 1957 when Clive Young and I were sent for a
term to RBHS as student teachers. Those of you who attended the School as pupils will know that you
cannot, in the eyes of the boys, go any lower in the homo sapiens scale than student teacher – we
were terrified! Tickey was one of those amazing men, though, who could identify with all and he
certainly went out of his way to make us feel welcome. I later learnt what a truly amazing colleague he
was and what an enormous privilege it was to sit at his feet to learn. He had a wonderful ability to
help colleagues in ways very simple and effective. In an early part of my career I was asked by Mr Alex
Clarke to teach Pure Chemistry to the Std 9s and 10s – funnily enough in the Allan Cormack Laboratory
and in what is now the new Mathematics room. I went to Tickey for some advice: how was I to teach
a std 9 Chemistry class that had Michael Buchner in it? Those of you who know Michael will see the
merit of my query and for those of you who don’t, let me just say Michael Buchner was a very, very
bright young man. Tickey’s answer: Mike, it’s simple – for YOU to teach Chemistry to Michael
Buchner, just get out of his bloody way!!
It was my first and most important lesson in the teaching of the very intelligent.
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Tickey de Jager was a writer, teacher, sports coach and may I add one other, horticulturalist. He was
author of numerous mathematics text books ranging from classroom texts to teachers’ texts to
textbooks for teaching the gifted mathematician. For this he is acknowledged nationwide, even
internationally. But I have described him as a writer because it is not only his authorship of textbooks,
but also the poetry and prose he wrote with such beauty, insight and humour. His love poems to girls
he taught, his description of events and his erudite expositions on subjects that interested him make
enjoyable and eye-opening reading. He loved to work with words, to use them to blend magic for
himself and his readers and to share his sometimes innermost thoughts with others. Some of his work
is extremely serious, other parts are rather more frivolous and often combining both. He wrote a
poem he called THE RONDEBOSCH UNDER TEN A which I use to emphasis this
In the last match of the season
You of the Under Ten
Played with the grit and spirit
And with the hearts of men.
You tackled and you tackled,
You ran and drove and scrummed,
And through the entire team
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Enthusiasm hummed.
You will do more important things -
Grow sensible and wise;
See the world more clearly
And with less starry eyes.
But part of what you will become
Was forged upon this day -
A character and confidence
That will forever stay.
So make a point of meeting
At a time still far away,
On the twenty-ninth of August
And let your mem'ry say:
"In the last match of the season
We of the Under Ten
Played with the grit and spirit......
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And with the hearts of men."
Tickey, the teacher: was this a skill with which he was born, were the beginnings set at his mother and
father’s side in the early Prieska days? Wherever it came from he became a genius and no matter
where he found himself, he was a teacher of all those he was with. Professor John Webb of the
University of Cape Town recalls in a citation he wrote on the award of the Medal of Honour by the
Federation of Mathematics and Science Teachers Associations in 1985:
This medal is not given just for teaching, however inspired. There must be more and indeed
there is. Way back in 1959 there was a refresher course at Stellenbosch for Science teachers.
Tickey went as an ordinary teacher, but by the end of the course he was one of the lecturers.
He would often be asked to baby-sit a class in the absence of the usual teacher and he would walk into
the class, establish the subject involved and then deliver a brilliant teaching period off the cuff that
had the children spellbound. He was a remarkable teacher per se, as well as a mathematician and
mathematics teacher of international acclaim.
He was a legend in his own time as a sports coach, be it rugby, cricket, athletics and, yes, even table
tennis. He successfully coached many schoolboy teams at Rondebosch, but I believe that it was as a
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coach of the individual wherein his greatness lay. Be it a youngster in an under 14 rugby team or an
established international star, he could be found hour after hour in the late afternoon until after dark
on the Rugby A teaching someone how to kick for touch or kick for the poles or pass a ball to the right.
(Roy McCullum, how often were you out there with him and Ian?). He would help a bowler sort out a
problem with a run-up, would throw dozens of balls at a batsman who had a problem with a particular
shot, would stand for hours with a table tennis player to help him get his top spin right, spending until
late into the evening and in pitch dark with a hurdler or a pole vaulter helping with his technique. His
sports coaching extended into the classroom where he often “entertained” classes with the
mathematical theory of successful place kicking or the theory of swing bowling.
I don’t think he approved of modern rugby and many of us armchair critics might agree with a little
poem he wrote. He called it CRASH BALL
When I was a boy
We played rugby for joy
And we ran for the sheer joy of living.
It was all about skill,
And delight and goodwill
And both wings did most of the scoring.
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But now they're as dour
As a Scot on a moor
And the centres crash back to the centre.
They have just one obsession -
Ball retention, possession,
Never mind what you do when you have it.
So tries come in snatches
And kickers win matches
And no-one is playing for pleasure.
It is all about winning
And losing is sinning
While players are purchased like cattle.
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And they have no remorse
For the use of brute force
And violence counts as a virtue.
Oh! bring back the art
And the lift of the heart
When Danie and Carel combined.
And the cool air was bracing
As your blood began racing
When skill and finesse took the field.
However,
There are still ev'rywhere
Brilliant players with flair
And men with adventurous vision.
Let us hope they restore
All the glory once more,
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And backlines start running the ball.
I have added the word horticulturalist to those used on the plaque in the inscription on the wall
outside the Tickey de Jager Mathematics Room simply because he loved and knew intimately every
tree and shrub in the Rondebosch grounds. To walk with him through the grounds turned into a
botanical lesson with Latin names and growth peculiarities of individual plants, a history or literature
lesson about where a particular tree was written about in days gone by or a lesson in medicine in oldfashioned
or even modern healing using plants. I told the story about the great oak in front of Canigou
at the OBU Centenary and I still believe it was through his persistence and vision, that that condemned
tree was saved for us still to be inspired by it 40 years later and, who knows, for how many more years
in the future. Tickey would have been delighted with the fact that many of the trees in the grounds
now have been labelled, thanks to the efforts of Jeanet Barker and Adam Harrower (E95) from
Kirstenbosch. The project was part of the Centenary celebrations and it was funded with money
donated by the London Old Boys – Jim Pettit, will you please take our very grateful thanks back to
them.
Tickey was a small man, but he made up for his lack of physical stature by being an intellectual giant.
When he was in a room with a group of people, all ears would seem to try to tune in to what he was
saying: he didn’t try to dominate conversation, he was just naturally more interesting to listen to. I
asked David Craig, a long-time colleague and friend of Tickey’s, to give me some thoughts on his
association with Tickey and he had these comments to make:
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o He delighted in the beauty of the THEORY so much that he was quite capable of
spending far longer devising a method rather than actually sorting out the problem
o He also believed that work came in two parts: deciding to do it and getting down to it: if
you left it long enough, the deciding bit disappeared and you had less to do
o He was a thinker “outside the box” long before the term was invented , but, however
enthusiastically he pursued a wild goose theory, he would be the first to admit it was
rubbish, if it was
o Always dismissive of the shoddy and the second-rate in intellectual affairs, he was able
to go to the heart of the issue or problem with disconcerting ease.
Yes, a truly remarkable man: an intellectual and mathematical giant, an exceptional teacher, a poet
and philosopher. He had a keen sense of humour and, despite all his qualities, lived a very simple life:
he much preferred riding his old bicycle with its “vet tekkie” tyres to driving a motor car. Rondebosch
was a much better place for his presence and we have been and will, I hope, continue to be, influenced
for the good by him.
I believe it is highly appropriate that, on this day 3 years to the day after his death, we pay homage to,
and honour, a Rondebosch great, a man who has brought as much glory to Rondebosch as any other
and far more than most, who was an inspiration to countless boys and colleagues, and I am thrilled
that the tangible outcome has been the creation of this Mathematics Room, where his spirit and
genius can continue to inspire teachers and boys in the future. Two of my grandsons are currently
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eing taught in the room and I asked them the other day what they thought of it – “very cool” from
one and “awesome” from the other – high praise from the modern generation and already testament
of approval from two boys who had no idea that a Tickey de Jager even existed. Long may this room
continue to inspire the boys who learn in it and the teachers who teach in it and even those who pass
by it and are curious about it. It is with great pleasure and real honour that I officially declare the
Tickey de Jager Mathematics Room open.
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