She made a student eat chalk, one of each colour, for talking in class. He powdered chalk dust all over a student’s face. She punished those who forgot to bring their water bottles by taking off their uniforms and making them stand half naked in front of the class. He aimed his cane at the knuckles and other bony parts to deliver maximum effect. She made those who forgot to do their homework kneel on small pieces of chalk. She cut holes in the skirts of female students whose skirts were too short.
Teachers from hell in a movie inspired by the Cultural Revolution? No, these are real teachers I knew when I was a primary school boy growing up in Singapore during the early 1970s. My parents told me never to argue with a teacher. He/she had the power to destroy my future with a stroke of the red pen. As kids, we probably feared them as much as we feared dentists.
Yes, I’ll never forget Mr Soh who dusted my face with a duster for “talking in class” when I was merely warning Kok Wah not to step on my drawing that had dropped on the floor. Maybe that’s why I became a dentist, hoping that Mr Soh would end up on my chair one day. Oops! I forgot the anaesthetic.
Fast forward to the 21st century and the teachers we see today are very different. Parents have become a bit more sophisticated and their children have become a lot more sophisticated. Try that eat chalk or duster on the face trick on a primary school student today and even Mas Selamat will pity you.
When news of MOE scholar Jonathan Wong’s arrest in the UK for the possession of child pornography first came to light, there was an expected public outcry. How did this paedophile get selected? Allow me to give a “toothful” answer to that. Because unlike HIV, you can’t diagnose padephilia with a blood test. Have these people never chosen the wrong tutor, the wrong maid, the wrong computer or the wrong washing machine? So what if he was never caught for peeping? There would have been no “telltale signs”. What next? Mind reading for all potential candidates? Monitor their movements 24 hours a day?
Now let’s take a short ride back to the dark ages when teachers and drill sergeants were free to practise sadomasochism on their students and recruits. Have we been traumatised for life and turned into zombies with no self esteem? Let’s be toothful about it. Teaching is a profession that offers lots of opportunities to work with children. Would it not draw paedophiles who happen to be intelligent and have a passion to teach? Why should almost every teacher interviewed says that he/she is “shocked, shocked, shocked, shocked, shocked”? Now, let’s put our judgement against padeophilia aside, tear off that label and look at the person in a holistic manner.
We’re not talking about psychotic and neurotic issues here. Like homosexuals, mentally stable paedophiles can act and direct films. They can invent and design and of course, they can also teach. Going back to Mr Soh, he was actually a very good Chinese teacher who incorporated acting and drama into our Chinese classes when other teachers just made us memorise the texts. Look at Bill Clinton. He may be a serial adulterer, but he’s also one of the better American presidents in recent times. I heard that Jonathan Wong is a good cook and I don’t mind trying out a few of his dishes. My children, will of course have to stay home.
The nasty teachers of yesteryears were just letting their quirky, deviant and twisted minds show in their creative punishments. Why don’t we see that now? Have humans evolved into more morally upright beings since the 1970s? I don’t think so and I don’t expect it to be so. All these quirky, deviant and twisted minds have merely gone into the closet. We shouldn’t be shocked if even uglier details are revealed if we were ever able to put a microscope over every teacher in school.
And if we were to raid the closets in the priesthood and monkhood where even higher moral standards are expected, we shouldn’t be surprised to find some skeletons in those closets too. We can all choose to get very upset with the ugliness of human nature, or we could regard it all with cynical resignation.
We all understand that a homosexual doctor who can conduct himself professionally will not molest a male patient. Jonathan Wong has not harmed any children yet. I’m perfectly OK with people like him teaching in my children’s school provided 1) he is able to conduct himself professionally 2) he is monitored by CCTVs whenever he is dealing with children. Frankly, what he does in the privacy of his home, as long as it doesn’t harm anybody, is none of my business. But of course, he has already been convicted and it would be a public relations disaster for MOE not to revoke his scholarship.
Many people are angry that MOE awarded a scholarship to a paedophile. I would be angrier if they had awarded the scholarship to someone who can’t teach. To avoid future disappointment, I suggest that we put more safeguards like CCTVs in schools and monitor the activities of all teachers regardless of whether they have any paedophilic tendencies. As long as no child molest or abuse occurs in school, I’m OK. Don’t show me the teachers’ closets. I don’t want to know what’s inside.
