Dear Readers,
In this post, I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I had the theme – practise what you preach – for my Home Learning task on 24th January 2011. Two similar incidents have occurred in school during the last month of January that made me want to highlight these undesirable behaviours of two teachers.
The first incident happened over the Electronic Message Board, a board which our school has for teachers to disseminate information to students.
However, a teacher posted a number of messages which adopted an extremely sarcastic and impolite tone, addressed to the students. The intensity of sarcasm increased with each messages she sent. I was appalled as I have never seen such messages being posted by a teacher. This really shocked me as I have always believed teachers are educators of knowledge and morals.
I would like to draw an analogy of students and teachers: students are like clay and teachers, moulds. When students are exposed to good behaviours and actions, they would be moulded to be morally upright people. Similarly, when they are being exposed to bad behaviours by the ones whom they respect, they would turn out to be equally bad. Unfortunately, instead of the usual decorum of a teacher of imparting morals to students, this teacher showed us the example of how a “bad teacher” truly is like.
The second incident took place during one of our lessons in class. Our teacher made fun of students’ names and passed racist remarks, thinking such antics are hilarious: We have been taught not to make fun of others as it would hurt them emotionally. Does this teacher not know even such a simple thing?
The racist remarks were extremely unforgivable. Singapore has always been striving to create a social cohesion beyond races, but how can we ever achieve this when such teachers do otherwise? Moreover, our nation is a multiracial society where we live together in perfect harmony, so we should be tolerant and work together instead of hurting one another with insulting remarks. This also sparked my inspiration for my narrative writing of the Singaporean short story.
In conclusion, teachers should be more mindful of their behaviours and actions, as they are whom students respect and will emulate such acts. As students often do not know how to filter right from wrong, they usually follow all such acts wholesale. Students should learn to differentiate right actions from wrong ones and emulate the former but not the latter.
To end, each and every one of us should practise what we preach!
Wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year!
Best Regards,
Nathan (:
I agree with you, especially in the case of the bucket and the orange. While it is alright to be humourous in class, it is not good to make fun of different races. It is alright if there is no malicious intent, it actually makes the class more interesting. You may also want to consider that the bucket may have been brought up in an environment where she was constantly called names as well. Bucket does not think it is wrong, it occurs naturally to her.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think so too. It tends to be the case where people are abused or treated in a certain manner during their childhood and they do the same to others when they are older. This is similar to many serial killers, where they are abused during childhood and somewhat "vent" their anger on others, thereby murdering them. I am not saying this is morally right but we should kind of sympathise with them as we can say that it is not entirely their fault.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nathan's viewpoint that we, as students and teachers, should be more discreet in our actions. If the teacher wished to use some antics to make his lesson more interesting, he should have stated so beforehand.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I believe that the teacher in making those comments, have thought of students who "follow all such acts wholesale". I trust that the teacher understands that the students will see their comments as just being "funny" and not follow it wholeheartedly.
After learning about the concept of prejudice in the LA lessons and To Kill A Mockingbird, people cling on to their prejudices and beliefs about a group of people as in Maycomb County if the justice in a country is biased. During the past few decades, the Singapore government has been trying out and executing different means and measures to ensure that the different races in Singapore integrate and live harmoniously like the policy that states that a certain percentage of Malays, Chinese and Indians have to occupy a certain HDB flat. However, nothing in this world is perfect. Even though the policy was implemented and we live much more harmoniously with one another now, we still do not know much about each others’ races as I have noticed that racial enclaves are still present in HDB flats today and prejudices are still present.
Dear Ivan,
ReplyDeleteI would like to highlight that jokes aim to spread laughter in a morally upright way. In my opinion, it does not really matter if the speaker means such "jokes" intentionally or just as an antic to make the class laugh.
The fact that this "joke" is a racist one makes it one which is lacking in ethics. I would like to quote from one of our National Education (NE) messages to back up my point: "We must preserve racial and religious harmony."
Therefore, I feel that racial jokes should not be cracked, as they threaten our multiracial harmony in our society.
Best Regards,
Nathan :)
Hi Nathan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your remarks. I immediately identified the teachers because I felt similar feelings too. For the first teacher (we'll call her bucket for the time being), I feel that she should not be so sarcastic in her remarks too. However, it is maybe caused by her lack of proficiency in the English Language which caused her to imply things that she did not mean to. Even so, I feel that this should not be an excuse for Bucket to hide behind.
About the racist jokes, I feel that it is very important that (let's call him orange for the time being) Orange should not have cracked that joke so many times. I do know what he is trying to say, but by making racist remarks, it does not help in our learning. Humour is a good tool to make the atmosphere less tense, but if racist jokes are being brought out during classes, I feel that it is not right. Also, calling of names is not exactly wrong, in my opinion. If some people do not mind being called certain names, I do not see anything wrong with doing so. However, if the person do not feel comfortable, I feel that we should stop. In the case of Orange and (let's call him leaf) Leaf, I could see that Leaf was not too pleased. Therefore, Orange should have stopped.
2I125
Hi Kee Xuan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. I agree with you! =D
Best Regards,
Nathan :)
I feel heartened when I read this post and all your comments. While I'm sad that there are teachers that have not been role models for you, I'm glad you have the discernment to see what behaviours to emulate and what to disregard. What moved me the most was that you tried to put yourselves in their shoes and explain their actions, rather than persecute them, as students in the past have done for lesser crimes. The truth is that teachers are human beings and just as fallible.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, do you guys refer to me as Yellow?
ReplyDeleteHi Miss Huang,
ReplyDeleteNo we don't! =)
Best Regards,
Nathan :)