Dear admin,
There has been something I've been curious about as of late. It started with the debate surrounding the carpark issue. This led to people comparing teaching to other noble jobs such as medicine or engineering. But for the latter, there is a large amount of scrutiny and accountability. Patients can sue doctors for malpractice. Doctors can risk losing their license if the perform a procedure wrongly. Engineers can also risk being charged if they are found to be negligent in their work.
If all these other important jobs are held to a certain level of scrutiny and accountability, should teachers also be subject to more scrutiny?
What about the Shuqun Secondary bully case? The teacher was aware of the bullying for awhile but failed to act on it. The bullying that was caught on camera happened in a classroom where parents are assured that students will be safe. Should the school and teacher be reprimanded for what occured?
I saw a conversation on another forum whereby a supposed teacher told another former who got into local university to be grateful to MOE teachers for getting the results he had that enabled him to get there. If teachers should be credited for successes, should they also share the blame if there are failures? Especially in the recent case of the RI students. Of which only 1 in 10 managed to go to JC.
Conversely however, if we were to scrutinise teachers even more, less people would join the teaching fraternity as the heavy responsibility might "scare" them away. Too much accountability would just shift more burden to teachers and parents might feel that it is the teacher's job to discipline/teach/babysit all at the same time.
This post is not to "pass judgement" upon teachers. But I really want to get a sense of what people feel about this.
Concerned parent
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