May 06, 2004

From the papers...15

Mr Chan Soo Sen, Minister of State for Education, commended on Mr Ng's (x-principal, Nan Chiau High) decision to step down from his position.

Mr Chan thinks that if MOE keeps Mr Ng as a principal, MOE would be sending out the message to the rest of the academic workers that such acts of disciplining a student can be done under some circumstances. And, he felt that such a message is unacceptable.

At the same time, he commented that MOE wants students to be innovative... and to use physical punishment to force them to conform is an objective that MOE doesn't want to fulfill.

My queries now.
1. Corporal punishment on students CAN be done under some circumstances. That's what the MOE guidelines said! What's the man talking about? The sensible question to ask is, how viable are those guidelines? Does it make any sense that one of the guidelines is that corporal punishment can only be meted out to boys and not girls? DUH! Now we can't even be responsible for being a problem. Is this stereotyping or just blind protection?
2. If indeed academic workers (particularly principals) in Singapore are so easily led into thinking what can and cannot be done, monkeys see, monkeys do, then I ask, how in the hell does MOE choose which monkeys to be principals? Seriously, I always trusted that in order to be the head of any educational instituition, the person must be of high integrity, edified and has the ability to discern what is right (do-able) and what is not. Now Mr Chan is actually telling me that he's afraid that's not the case. He just helped to undermine the waning confidence I have in our education system. Thank you very much.
3. Physical punishment has much less to do with forcing students to conform, compared to the streaming system. How many of us, non-problematic students, have given up on our ideals and dreams just so we fit nicely into the mainstream? That's not conformity, what is? You wanna know who are the really innovative students in the school? Go to all the problematic classes. And before you hold them under the cane, listen to their thousand and one reasons and ways to justify their ever-stagnant grades and disturbing behaviour. MOE's idea of innovative is actually just another conformity to what they want from us so that the whole country can stay optimistic about a 5% growth rate every year.

Honestly, these people from MOE are really getting on my nerves. First it was Mr S, now Mr C. And don't tell me I don't even have the freedom to voice my opinion about the people I didn't choose to put in the ministry. F*** it.

Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 00:12