Bovine bells toll

WHAT is it about teachers nowadays whose didactic deeds leave so much to be desired?

I am of course referring to the teacher in Sungkai, Perak who meted out a rather outlandish form of punishment to two pupils for failing to complete their homework.

He took to belittling the boys by likening them to bovines belching mulch out on some field when they should actually be attending to their scholarly tasks at home.

His punishment did not end up at merely tossing caustic barb – the teacher was accused of going through the extreme effort of dangling cow bells round their necks and offered grass to the two boys; it was lunchtime after all! There was further humiliation piled on when the comic pantomime somehow, perhaps naturally nowadays, ended with an undignified posting on Facebook!

What on earth was ‘Sir’ thinking about?

I had my fair share of teacher-doled punishment in my school days so I know a bit about incurring the wrath of ‘Sir’. Woe betide anyone in my class who failed to complete our weekly essays set by Ms Tan who, bless her; introduced us the joys of Shakespeare in Standard 5!

There we were, all innocent and untouched by Zionist zeal that would have doused Ms Tan’s literary endeavour on the mere hint that Shakespeare could be anti-semitic!

In our wide-eyed innocence, it never mattered if sleeper Shylock was Mossad in mufti or not. Just that, here was a moneylender who was no more determined than our present day neighbourhood Ah Long in employing inventive methods at debt collection.

To me they are just kindred spirits who would not think twice about extracting their pound of flesh when the date falls due and the cheti calls regardless of race. You owe me money, you pay me monthly!

So when the boys turned up in class without handing in their homework, the teacher simply flipped.

No doubt this is an oversimplification. At the outset, the two boys were like a fish out of water; or perhaps in this case – grazing on someone else’s pasture. They were attending a vernacular school when they themselves were from a different ethnic background.

Parents with kids finding themselves in similar dire straits know their conundrum only too well – vernacular schools pose deeper challenges to such families coming from other communities.

Naturally, the parents of the two boys took exception to this act of pastural (sic) punishment that they lodged a police report. The media got hold of the news and no amount of hush hush tactics could keep a good story down.

A horde of media men (and women) descended on the town; Sungkai being not too far from Tin Town Ipoh, to attend the press conference deftly arranged by the boys’ parents.

Unusually, at least one local television station with newly-acquired hardware flexed its re-invigorated outside broadcast muscle to cover this media event, such was the interest.

It is a commentary on present-day Malaysian society that such cases are coming out in the open followed by a certain degree of public debate and reasoned discussion, leading to some compromise solution.

In this case, the media was the vehicle while the debate which took place post the news conference having been thrown into the public sphere . Indeed, the ‘case’ was tried in the court of public opinion, everyone sat on the jury and there was nothing left for the ‘judge’ to do but pronounce ‘guilt’ on the part of the teacher.

Duly ‘deliberated’, the ‘guilty’ teacher was given his transfer orders – hopefully suitably chastened not to subject another set of young charges elsewhere to similar ‘grazing’ torment having been given his taunting lesson.

As for the boys, it remains to be seen if they had learnt enough of a lesson that should stay etched in their psyche forever; that a piece of homework is just that – work to be done at home!