"Whatever for?!", was my immediate reply. Apparently, her class teacher had instructed each of her students to bring a cane to school, with their respective names clearly labelled on it so that she can use it at her pleasure when they misbehave. Utterly ridiculous! Though English-educated me has come to accept that Chinese schools have no qualms on using the cane indiscrimately to ensure discipline and to punish those who find it hard to zip up their mouths in class, or those who misbehave, or do not complete their homework or bring their books to school, etc, I sometimes find it unacceptable that the teachers are allowed to just rampantly use the cane on these young children to inflict fear on them when education is supposed to be fun!
Yes, some Primary 1 students may need a little more discipline than other students, but this particular class teacher's addiction to resorting to the cane just goes way over the limit! To Teacher X, every little misdeameanour warrants being caned! If the class is noisy, every student gets caned even if he or she did not contribute to the noise! That to me is insane! And when Teacher X canes, she really canes. It is not a slight tap on their hand. The Whining Queen had on occasions related to me the times when she had to rub her hands to soothe the immediate pain away or to run to the toilet to pour cold water over her hand.
I mentally prepared myself for a showdown with Teacher X.
It was just as well that the Whining Queen fell ill with a very bad throat infection accompanied by a very aggresive fever and was unable to go to school the next day. When I met her class mate, Wei Xin, the next day to collect her homework, he told me that almost the entire class had brought their individual canes as instructed by Teacher X. Like us, his mother refused to get a cane for him to bring to school. I was shocked to hear that this resulted in the class teacher caning him for two consecutive days using several of their classmates' canes! Utter madness!
The Whining Queen had to stay home the rest of that week as she continued to have a raging fever of 104 degrees, despite being on antibiotics. Dr Chin, our paediatrician, recommended doing a blood test on her on Day 4 as her fever just did not subside. He wanted to cross out dengue fever as he commented that in certain cases, dengue may be camouflaged by some other infection if the patient was unlucky enough to be suffering from both ailments. Thankfully, the test came out negative and her fever subsided the day after.
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| Sponging my little patient with ice water in our fight against her very stubborn high fever! |
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| Feeling marginally better on Day 3... "Thanks Mum and Dad for the many sleepless nights that you had to endure." |
When one overuses the cane for even the slightest thing, it serves little purpose as through the young child's eyes, he learns that to get what you want, one must inflict fear and violence. Where does this then lead to? I do not believe that is what the education system is about. Education is not just academic, but it should also focus on teaching children on how to cope with the ups and down of life and how to react and cope when a group of friends suddenly decide to "unfriend" you, and so on.
Another recent example of Teacher X's shortcoming was when she recently let go a smelly "bomb" during one of her lessons. One of the Whining Queen's classmates innocently commented "Peeee-uuuuu.....what is that smell? Who farted?". Though Teacher X admitted that it was her, the way she replied the student wasn't quite the sort of exemplary behaviour that one would expect a teacher to have. Instead, of just apologising for it and seeing the lighter side of things by a simple "Oops! Sorry, it was me - not sure how it escaped me!", Teacher X retorted "It was me. What? Haven't you farted before?!"
Sigh......
When my almost 7 year-old princess re-enacted the scene for me, I had to correct Teacher X's behaviour lest she learns from such deplorable behaviour.
Aside from Teacher X, the other teachers of their commando school are really pretty good with some outstanding ones. And so, as Mr T and I prepare the Whining Queen for her upcoming exams, we continuously motivate her to excel in her studies so that she can move to a higher-tiered class in Standard 2 and escape the cane-wielding hands of Teacher X.
~ Written from the Heart
by a blessed mother-of-four who is fervently hoping that her Little Empress will do well enough in her upcoming exams to escape the clutches of Teacher X next year. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.
