WORLD Teachers’ Day 2026 will be commemorated on Oct 5, months after Malaysia observed its own Teachers’ Day on May 16.
It is a fitting moment to reflect on what a teacher ultimately leaves behind.
Some retire from the classroom.
Others simply discover that their classroom has become much larger.
The late Jacob A/L PC Mathews, honoured as one of Malaysia’s Tokoh Guru Kebangsaan in 2013, belonged firmly to the second group.
His lessons travelled far beyond textbooks and timetables, into sport, service, suffering, faith and the lives of generations who still remembered him long after the bell had rung.
I had the privilege of meeting him before he passed away. His son Kenneth took me to see his father. I had heard much about Cikgu Jacob and knew he had not been well, so there was a certain tenderness to the visit.
When somebody has lived a long and useful life and health begins to weaken, conversations should not always be postponed. Curiously, I went to see Cikgu Jacob because of history.
I had been reading about the British Indian Army landing at Morib near the end of the Second World War, when more than 42,000 personnel came ashore on Sept 9, 1945, as part of Operation Zipper.
Japan had already surrendered, so the planned invasion became part of the Allied reoccupation.
That interest in half-forgotten corners of Malaysian history had earlier drawn me to God’s Little Acre in Batu Gajah, where those linked to the Malayan Emergency years lie buried.
Nations, after all, are shaped not only by the names in history books but also by the quieter lives beneath them. So I went to hear Cikgu Jacob speak about Morib. I came away thinking about life.
What began with Operation Zipper soon widened into memories, lessons and reflections. I had gone expecting to hear an old teacher tell stories. Somehow, the old teacher taught one more lesson.
A whistle and a paintbrush
Cikgu Jacob was born in 1943 and entered teaching in 1965.
His father worked on an estate and could not afford to send him overseas for further studies.
Cikgu Jacob had been a sportsman at school and wondered how he could build a career around that ability.
Teaching became the answer.
He specialised in physical education but also taught art.
One imagines Cikgu Jacob with a whistle in one pocket and a paintbrush in the other. He enjoyed painting landscapes and took part in exhibitions.
Perhaps the two subjects were not so different: sport requires discipline, teamwork and resilience; art requires patience, observation and imagination.
A good teacher probably needs all of them.
For 33 years, until his retirement in 1998, Cikgu Jacob taught and coached.
Yet, what struck me most was his definition of a teacher’s reward.
Teachers of his generation, he said, hoped to bring up a child who would one day say, “This was my teacher who taught me.”
That, he said, was their reward.
What a wonderfully unfashionable KPI.
Today we measure education through examinations, rankings, dashboards, competencies and outcomes.
All have their place, but beneath the numbers lies a simpler question: 30 or 40 years later, does the student remember the teacher? Many of Cikgu Jacob’s did.
He once met a group of former pupils he had taught decades earlier.
Hair had whitened, faces had changed, and Cikgu Jacob struggled to place them all.
When he failed to recognise one gentleman, the reply came quickly: “Sir, I am Zawawi, sir. But sir, I cannot forget you.”
Why? Cikgu Cikgu Jacob had once caught young Zawawi outside class and administered the sort of physical reminder about discipline that belonged to another era.
Poor Cikgu.
You taught a boy for years, and four decades later his clearest memory is the day you caught him wandering the corridor. Still, he remembered.
Other reunions were more tender.
A former student from 1969 recognised Cikgu Jacob at the Sports Commissioner’s office and embraced him, bringing tears to his eyes.
At the Education Ministry, another former pupil who had risen to a senior position left a meeting to hug her old teacher. Jacob called it one of his happiest moments: “That is the moment you know you’ve done your job well as a teacher.”
One of his former students, Dato’ Mustapa Mohamed, captured the enduring qualities of great teachers well.
He recalled that teachers of Jacob’s generation were held in high esteem for “their passion, dedication, love for the profession, and commitment to shape and transform the lives of young boys and girls”.
Cikgu Jacob had every reason to be proud.
Over the years, his students went on to distinguish themselves across Malaysian life, among them members of royalty, judges, senior corporate leaders, sportsmen and other prominent personalities.
Yet when he spoke of them, the pride was never about collecting famous names.
It was the quiet satisfaction of a teacher watching boys and girls he had once taught, coached and encouraged grow into men and women who reached the highest levels of their respective fields.
Their achievements had become, in a small but meaningful way, part of his own reward.
Learning a sport from a videotape
Jacob believed education did not stop at the classroom door. Academics and sport, he felt, should go hand in hand, and he coached youngsters across several disciplines, some of whom later competed at high levels.
One story stands out. In 1976, Jacob was shown a videotape of handball, then largely unfamiliar in Malaysia.
He liked what he saw, despite not yet knowing how to play it. So he learnt from the tape, taught the game to students in Banting, and helped it grow.
A state association followed, courses were organised, Jacob took on leadership roles in Selangor and Malaysian handball, and the sport eventually reached Sukan Malaysia or SUKMA.
Today we have innovation hubs, transformation programmes, strategic frameworks and workshops to prepare for the next workshop.
Cikgu Jacob watched a video, then went outside and taught some children.
He had shown the same instinct earlier by helping establish a school cinema club when television was still new and many pupils could not easily go to the cinema.
A projector was obtained, films were brought in and students paid a small membership fee.
The technology was never the point.
A teacher simply looked at what his students did not have and asked: what can I do?
When the teacher became a cancer patient
Then in 1998, life changed the question. Jacob discovered cancer.
There had been no dramatic warning.
He noticed something unusual about one thigh.
Initial reassurance suggested greater muscle development from sport, but a relative who was a surgeon urged him to investigate further.
Eventually came the diagnosis he feared: stage three cancer.
Jacob described waiting for the biopsy results as torture.
When malignancy was confirmed, he thought it might be the end.
His thoughts went immediately to his wife and children, and he even began throwing away sporting belongings that had meant so much to him.
Friends reassured him: “You’ll be all right.” Jacob remembered thinking it was easy for them to say that.
They did not have cancer.
We often mean well when comforting somebody, yet encouragement sounds different when you are standing safely on the pavement while the other person is in the traffic.
Jacob now knew what fear felt like from inside, and his suffering enlarged rather than narrowed his awareness of others.
While still undergoing treatment, he became involved with MAKNA, the National Cancer Council Malaysia.
He knew what a frightened patient might be thinking while everybody around him was saying not to worry.
His first assignment was to locate a cancer patient who needed help.
When he reached the neighbourhood, he was told the patient had already died.
Help had arrived too late; there had not been enough volunteers.
Jacob did not forget it.
Cancer had taught him something coaching manuals never could: sometimes you cannot remove somebody’s suffering, but perhaps you can reach the door before it is too late.
There is another image of Jacob I particularly like.
Malaysia was hosting the Commonwealth Games in 1998, and Jacob had been a senior athletics official.
Cancer surgery threatened to deny him what he saw as a high point of his sporting involvement.
He still went on crutches.
Unable to perform his normal duties, he helped with timekeeping for the 100 metres.
There is something symbolic about that picture.
You may no longer be able to do everything you once could. Do what you still can. Turn up.
Kenneth remembers his father saying that if you think you are in pain or grief, pause and think of someone else, perhaps someone close to you, who may be going through something harder.
Jacob did not find a magical formula that removed his own pain.
He converted pain into empathy.
Asked later what he still hoped could change, Jacob again turned towards others.
He worried about the financial burden faced by cancer patients and called them the three Cs: cancer, chemo and cash.
Illness does not inspect your bank balance before arriving.
For many families, disease brings another fear: how to afford treatment.
Jacob hoped more could be done to lessen that burden.
Even after surviving cancer, his question remained consistent: what can I do for somebody else?
A family called Malaysia and a fortune cookie
Jacob’s idea of a life well lived was not confined to school, sport or service.
Asked what a movie about his life should show, he chose his family, proudly describing it as a “1-Malaysia family”, embracing Malay, Chinese, Iban, Baba, Indian and Malayalee ties through marriage.
Diversity, for him, was not a slogan but something lived around the family table.
Asked what message he would place inside a fortune cookie, Jacob offered perhaps the finest summary of his life: “Remember you are in this world not for a long time, so please touch as many as possible during your journey back home.”
Touch as many as possible. Not impress, defeat or accumulate as much as possible. Touch.
Perhaps that is the ultimate measure of a teacher.
Thirty-three years in education cannot be reduced to examination results.
One child discovered an ability, another learnt discipline, some represented the country, one remembered being caught outside class, and another left an important meeting decades later to embrace her old teacher.
A sport grew because somebody watched a videotape and thought Malaysian children might enjoy it.
A cancer patient became a cancer volunteer.
We often imagine legacy as something substantial bearing our name: a building, scholarship, foundation or road. Teachers understand another kind.
It lives quietly inside others: courage instilled, discipline learnt, talent discovered, a door opened, and a young person encouraged at just the right moment.
Jacob was fortunate. Some students came back.
They called him “Sir”. They hugged him. They remembered.
I think again of my visit with Kenneth.
I had gone to hear Jacob speak about Morib, the Indian troops and a moment in Malaysian history that should not be forgotten.
Instead, history gave way to something more personal: a teacher sharing stories, a father revealing his values, and an old man still giving of himself.
Before we left, we prayed for Cikgu Jacob’s health.
Then he prayed for me.
I had thought I might offer encouragement to a man who was unwell.
Instead, once again, the teacher was giving something away.
Cikgu Jacob passed away on June 17, 2022, leaving behind his beloved wife Sally, herself a retired English teacher and Tokoh Guru Selangor, four children, 11 grandchildren, and a wider family of friends, former students and countless others whose lives he had touched.
That is why his words about the journey home feel especially poignant.
We are not here for very long.
Perhaps the final measure is not what we accumulated or how loudly our achievements were announced, but something simpler: how many lives did we touch along the way?
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
