I remember back in those days, when I was still green, inside and out. (ie, green in the ways of the world and wearing the ugly camouflaged No.4) Everytime when we have an exercise we would have a safety briefing and there would be tons of safety regulation books to bring out and to go through. The briefing would be boring and long. (I am not saying that this is bad, unnecessary or anything. It is more like common sense at work. If you happen to have no common sense, then people around you would inject some into you. Usually append with the F!@#$#% and end with #$@#. You tend to remember more from the #@$$@# than from the "Please do that" )
I found out some interesting happening within the government's offices from my daily chats. Namely the SAF and MOE. There is a new department called School Safety in MOE. The government being the good people that they are, provided SAF personnel with an avenue to work after their retirement age. (FYI: SAF combat personnel are no longer an asset after their age of 45. They can no longer hold combat position. They will be switch over to administration or instructional role. Of course the position of General is exempted. Not that they have seen any life action before.)
These retired people from the Uniform services, namely the SAF, Police Force or the Civil Defense take up position in the other various ministries. MOE being the largest employer in Singapore (In my opinion only. Vague recollection of seeing it somewhere before. I did not really check it out), absorbed quite a number of these retired personnels.
They take up position as the Operation Manager of the School. They bring with them the years of experience in running the uniform groups into the schools. Sometimes they bring about a discipline and injected some into the students. Some other times, they help out with the logistic of the school, in helping to co-ordinating the building management and school buses. It relieved the School Administrator of some work. The teachers work load still remains the same.
Safety is an important aspect in our daily life. It is aided by common sense. This group of "retired" people from the Safety committee wants to document down the safety procedure in school. So what did this committee do, they delegate it down to the people on the ground to generate, collate and compile it for them to review. So these people who has no prior knowledge of the situation on the ground start to review this documents. What can they do? Do they know what is right? Have they done any job? Did they come down to quietly observe the situation? Sounds like easy money to me. They are bringing the "Eye power" from the SAF to MOE. 3G army so what? You still need people to run it. Scholars only read about it and talk about it. You need people to talk the talk and walk the walk. Do what they preach.
Who are the people on the ground? The teachers! The HODs! The principals! Every day they spent time handling the normal school stuff. They also had to handle the discipling, the morals, disputes, the homeworks, the parents, the queries brought up by the parents, the CCAs of the students, the co-ordinating of the CCAs events, school functions, staff welfare, small financial matters, photocopies worksheets, read emails, update the daily class lessons, do projects from MOE, provide feed back to new systems, mark test papers, handle teacher work load, arrange meetings, conduct workshops, managed expectations of the parent or public, source of vendors, generate publicity for the school, attend meetings, write email, write report, perform ranking of staff.... the list goes on. (I am sure there are more. But not being a teacher myself, these are some of the activities which I see happening from some of teachers, friends. And no wonder a large number of teacher marry within the same profession. They had no time to have a normal social life.)
So why do these committee had to generate additional work for the poor teachers? Why ask the teachers or HODs to come out with a school safety document? This is a huge task. Ask the committee to do some work. What is being done to help them? Mr Education minister can you say thing? You had admitted that the 5 day work week was an impossible thing. Yes, some teachers had to work on Sunday and public holiday too. And they do not get off-in-liew to compensate them for working on a rest day. (Like bring the children to the National Stadium for National Day parade)
Teaching is a joy. Imparting knowledge and morals is noble profession. However it is is being killed by tons and tons of paperwork. Sometimes unnecessary paper work. Too much meeting means lesser time to do work. Too many committee means too many meeting. Education industry has change plenty, but something still stays the same. Grooming and imparting values take a lot of time and it cannot be hurried. Express or Normal. EM1 or EM3, it is the same. Used to be that there are teachers who are in the teaching force all their life. Now, most wants to retire early. We still only have 8 hours a day.
Please don't give them more unnecessary work. Let them teach.
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