Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Discipline - " Crime" and Punishment

Punishments on students have become a hot topic recently.

Maybe newspapers cannot print sensational news about breakdown of public order, corruption by the politicians and government machinery, and constant leakages in public utilities....

So the easy target...the teachers...cannot do tuition....cruel/crude punishments.....

Let me relate my experience. When I was sent to become Headmaster of a Jenis Kebangsaan secondary school ..way back in 1980...... the situation among the school children was not good.. everything is relative..but having come from the "top" school in Kedah...the situation in "my" new school was "baaad"....from hair to toe...and the spitting and foul language, crude behaviour....

How teachers can tolerate this?

Used to it was the answer! But I was not ..... I was going to do something about this! Good Luck the teachers chorused....heh everybody will have to put in some effort.... new broom.. new broom.... they had tried but not successful..they have been warned ...

Well a lot of things were done....one of the action taken was to cane 96 students from Form 1 to Form 5 one morning!

96 students were caned by the new Headmaster!

More canings followed...public caning mind you.... within 3 months...all children were in proper uniform, no belts allowed...no more long hair...the discipline teacher had become part time barber..... Parents came to school... except for 1 parent all were happy.... long overdue they said.. the PTA became active again....

Our motto was..there are school rules and those who broke the rules have to take the punishment... if you dont like the rules then change the rules..but when rules are broken punishments will be meted out....one of the punishments was Public Caning...those parents who dont like or disagree with Public Caning can disagree before hand.... we will then ask for suggestions as to how their children will be punished... surprisingly most parents agree!

You see the parents will not object when other people's children get public caning..they will say..they deserve..it is only when their children get caning that they start to disbelief and talk about trauma, psycho scars, inhuman and unfair......

As I see it..if the school has spelled out the punishment for the "crime" , all pupils regardless of who the parents are, will have to take the punishment or get out from the school...

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Talking to Myself

Looks like nobody has paid a visit.

SO I am talking to myself. It is time for introspection.

We need to talk to oursleves to clear up a few things.

WHy is there nobody listening? I am not promoting myself.
Why is there nobody responding? The things I said is not important enough to get them to respond.

Well..talking to myself again

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Late to School

I am opening a forum for everybody to have their say on the way schools are run in Malaysia.
Education affects everybody and everybody from the students to the grand mama has a right to speak.....

I was a teacher for 20 odd years and head of a school for 18.

As a teacher I was right most of the time..when I became the HM..there was a dramatic improvement..I was right ALL of the time! I am now wondering.... if I had become the PPD or Director...

Going home was not much fun because the wife was right every time.....

Meanwhile we will kick off this first post.....

Please Pick One - Why Are You Late?

One thing I used to do while I was headmaster was to prepare a list of all the possible reasons why I or any teacher is late for school. Every time I come across a new one i would add on to the list.

The late teacher will be asked to pick from the List of reasons...among which were...

Heavy traffic or traffic jam -
All traffic lights RED -
COws on the road -
Car cannot start -
The baby care came late, send child to mother-in-law's place -
Stomach ache in the morning -
Woke up late - had late night
Send father to hospital -
Alarm clock failed -


After a short few weeks there was a dramatic increase in punctuality.

I had told the teachers that I wanted to study the relationship between lateness and gender, graduate or non-graduate, age, university/schools, races, car-owners/ motor-cyclists/walkers, distance from school....

I did not have enough data to make any conclusion. WOnder if any school today can enlighten me?


But seriously - Do you think that people should be excused for being late?