Wise headmaster nipped bullies in the bud

I QUITE agree with Dr N. Thiyagar that “Giving suspensions to bullies doesn’t help to change their behaviour” ( The Star, Oct 24).

He said that we need to find the root cause of bullying. I, too, believe that every wrong action – in this case bullying – should be nipped in the bud.

Let me share an anecdote. It goes way back to 1971, when I was a Standard One student in an allboys missionary school in Perak.

Three of us boys got together and had fun with this scrawny classmate of ours. We teased him as one of us emptied his school bag. We scattered all his books in the field and had a great laugh as this boy cried.

In our minds, we were having the fun of our lives. The next day, the three of us were summoned to the headmaster’s office.

There stood this boy, with his older brother who was also a student there. The headmaster (HM) asked us what we did to the boy the day before and we related to him the whole episode of us having fun with him.

In actual fact, he felt he was bullied – without us realising it. The HM asked us to call our older brothers who were also schooling there.

The HM told our brothers what transpired, made us apologise to the boy and gave each of us a stroke of the rotan. On that day our HM made us realise that the so-called fun that we had was the beginning of a bullying episode.

Eventually, all of us became good friends and had high regard for my HM till his dying day. If the wise HM did not nip this in the bud we would have gone on having this “fun”, which might have got worse.

Thank you, Sir. I became a teacher myself and made sure that such “fun” acts did not take place among my students. I taught Physical Education in school and I always kept a watch on my boys.

There were incidents where the boys would watch wrestling on TV at home and try out some of the moves on their friends. I would always step in immediately and nip that in the bud.

I am 52 now and I still remember that particular day when I was seven. Thanks to my late HM, who instilled the value which left an everlasting imprint on my heart. Headmasters play important roles in developing character holistically in schools.

Sad to say, present-day HMs are hardly in schools to run the school effectively; they are often called by the Education Department to do something outside school or they are busy attending courses after courses.

Please let the HMs be in school and give them the autonomy to run the school the best way they know. I’m glad that I was nipped in the bud.