The recent current affairs in the country reminded me of something that happened to me when I was a lot younger.

 

When I was in Secondary Form 1, I had an art teacher who wasn't teaching us art... in fact she wasn't really teaching.  All she did was walked into the classroom 10 min late, chalked a topic on the board and walked out, leaving 50 odd wide eyed youngsters in awe.  Sometimes she never even utter a word. So one fine afternoon, I decided to write a letter to her. I can't remember the exact content in details, but it was the representation of the thought of majority of the class... that she should buck up and do a better job.  I didn't think I was being critical, ok.. you want to lepak, atleast do it inside the classroom lah, sit there read a book... pretend to be there for your students or something.

 

I showed the letter to two of my best friends, being the typical timid students we were, we submitted the letter anonymously.  Then shit hit the fan.  The whole class was threatened to the principal's office unless someone owned up.  So all three of us "kena".  Suffice to say at the end we found ourselves buying gifts and making apologies to not just the art teacher but the form teacher and almost the principal.  They made us cried and felt that whatever we did was so wrong that it should never happened again... and I thought they were right... they were the teachers afterall.  Throughout the whole ordeal, no one ever talked about the real issue which we raised, all the discussions or accusations rather was about the nuisance we have caused.  That's the education system I grew up in, criticism is a crime and nothing/noone should be questioned.

 

They talked about the marches and street demos like they are such crime yet the real issues were never discussed.  You can't blamed them, they were probably raised in the same education system I did. If it happens at a micro level in smaller institutions like schools everywhere... why wouldn't it happen at a macro level.