Teachers Day this year will be pretty different because it’s hopping onto the new media bandwagon as well. In just less than 140 characters, pay a tribute or two to a teacher whom have impacted your educational walk these years. Given at least ten years of fundamental education, a Singaporean should have at least one or two teachers who have been significant in their growing up years. I have long paid my tribute to Ms Tay Ling Ling: a friend; my secondary two teacher, one who led me to Christ, Ms Ng Back Hon and Ms Ang Choon Cheng.

Not all teachers are as angelic, or at least be bothered about your lives beyond the academic frame; at least not for those devilish teachers I had in primary school.

Many swear by their grandmothers’ tombs that their primary school days were the most memorable (in the good way); my primary school days were hellish. My generation perhaps sat in a phase considered transformational and transitional for many in the educational sector. Personally, I was taken aback for teachers who lash out punishments as if they were sadomasochistic. Once, I got a beating, a hard slap on my forearm when I didn’t have a ruler required for a class in primary one. I was neither rebellious nor defiant.

The same teacher taught me again when I got her as my primary three English teacher. She would ban all non-English conversations in class in her bid to “encourage” students to converse effectively in English. Sounds like a brilliant idea? She upped the level when she discovered like all forbidden fruits, laws like this don’t usually get much attention. She imposed some draconian rules which include students slapping themselves on their cheeks for ten times for every infraction. Since then, every student becomes obsessed with being overly conscious with the choice of language that’s coming out of his mouth. Forget about encouragement, about motivation and about inspiration. Let’s lash out punishments instead, might as well offer jail terms for those who blithely speak in their Mother Tongues. Yeah, forget about our roots as well since we hardly have any to begin with.

In Hai Sing Catholic School, my vice-principal confirmed this belief by telling my class that “Chinese is less important just because only one lesson out of the seven is taught in that language“. Time and time again, we are brainwashed that Chinese is useless and if we have chosen to embrace being effective Mandarin speakers, we belong to a lower stature. And ironically more than two decades later, we sing a different tune because of the economy China brings. Suddenly, education direction gets steered by current economic markets.

In university, those conversing in Mandarin gets associated with the Mainland Chinese, whereas those who communicate in fluent, esoteric English gets to sit on the higher-class pedestal.

Next from experience, I noticed that the student who behaved as quiet as a mouse will naturally get into a teacher’s good books. I used to talk to this girl sitting beside me in class but was once caught by this ogle-like teacher; he would force the both of us to maintain a horse stance for as good as 20 minutes. And that’s not all, he will proceed to pinch our cheeks so red that they turned crimson and swollen. Apart from the physical abuse, the emotional rejection we faced from our classmates as they ridiculed and labeled us for being deviant students were the most hurting, so much so that they still remained vividly in my minds.

If one could wonder why a person (especially that of a Singaporean student) remains less vocal in the university classrooms, our less-than memorable primary school experience may well contributed to that. We were continually asked to keep quiet, punished by these unqualified educators for the most trivial and innocent mistakes.

Good thing that the Education Ministry has intervened that; good thing that Singaporeans are getting more affluent and vocal in their rights as well as their children’s.

Just for curiosity sake, a check on the schools’ websites shows that the teacher who slapped my forearm, and handled out inhumane punishments on non-English students in her class is still working in Temasek Primary. The ogle-like teacher had gone missing though.