Let incident be wake-up call for all

I REFER to the report “Follow SOP in cases of theft, teachers told” (The Star, Feb 2) and the letter “Teachers must learn SOP for serious discipline cases” (Feb 3).

As a former teacher and after consulting with teachers, PTA members and school administrators, I believe that clearer guidelines must be provided for dealing with the various forms of discipline problems. Obviously, there are strict guidelines in the form of directives and circulars but who knows about them?

I recommend the creation of a clear and proper guidebook and giving it to all teachers on their first day of duty.

Too often in recent years, we heard of teachers blatantly breaking the rules when handling disciplinary problems. Yet nothing concrete has been done to ensure the proper dissemination to teachers of the ministry’s directives and circulars.

Suggestions by teachers recently ranged from “loving kindness” to empowering all of them with the cane, indicating their ignorance of the ministry’s directives and circulars.

The case of M. Vasantha Piriya shows how horribly wrong things can go when a lackadaisical attitude leads to ignorance of the proper protocol when dealing with disciplinary problems.

Clearly, the teachers concerned erred by detaining the accused student for almost five hours, which is inhumane.

The husband of the teacher should not even have been allowed into the school. Why wasn’t the matter handled by a trained school counsellor? Was there even one?

We can only hope this incident will serve as a wake-up call.