Urinating outdoors

Teacher’s conundrum

I FOR one would never want a teacher to inflict corporal punishment on my daughter.

The rule is simple – no corporal punishment! Yet, we are hearing of more and more cases of teachers being disciplined because of the above matter.

In extreme cases, teachers lose their jobs – something for which they have sacrificed for many years.

Some are quick to blame teachers – but instead of pointing fingers at them, can we critically think why our teachers end up in the hot soup?

Things that we need to consider are:

Class size – if 40-50 students occupy a classroom, it obviously becomes difficult to maintain control and order;

Student’s behaviour – have parents instilled moral values in their children – that of respect, obedience, orderliness, honesty, punctuality and so forth? Teachers are daily bombarded with issues of stealing, late arrival, truancy, gambling, vandalism, noise, drugs to name a few;

Parental negligence or absence of parents – how many children are living with both their parents? In some instances, children live with their relatives and as such may not be given the support, guidance, love and care as a child living with both parents would get;

Automatic promotion – how would a student perform – say for instance, if he/she had scored less than 200 marks out of 500 at Year 11 level and are now sitting at Year 12 level?;

MOE’s demand – it is no hidden fact that teachers have been pushed to the core to produce good results. You are a good teacher if you produce a high pass rate but not so good if you are below 50 per cent. Why are teachers judged by their performance in exams when there is automatic promotion for all students?; and

Apart from their core responsibility of teaching, I reckon teachers have other duties in school and are part of a dozen committees.

In addition to that is the supervision they have to do for their absent colleagues.

It is a wonder how they juggle all these and remain sane at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, as normal human beings do

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under duress, some are unable to hold their frustrations and it all pours out in the form of corporal punishment.

So, we need to have more empathy and get into the shoes of teachers to get an insight as to what issues they face! MOSHIM ALI Banaras, Lautoka

THE Minister for Health Dr Ifereimi Waqainabete’s statement that men should stop urinating outdoors during grog sessions, is just not good enough.

More needs to be done to literally stop the bad habit.

Not only is it men but women as well, and spitting is also a big part of it. These bad habits have been going on for decades now and all we doing is giving such useless empty statements telling people to stop.

People will not stop unless much more drastic measures are put in place to tackle the issue.

The best solution is to do what the Momo na Tui Vuda just did in banning smoking and consumption of alcohol and kava in all villages under his reign.

Talk is cheap, we want action, so don’t talk about it until you can do something about it! SIMON JC HAZELMAN Rava Estate, Savusavu