KOTA KINABALU: “If my teachers are a bunch of bullies, why are our pupils unafraid of them and some even go to the extent of hugging their teachers and the younger ones even sitting on their teachers’ lap when they need reassurance?” lamented SK Stella Maris headmaster, Crispin Payus yesterday at his office.
“And when a pupil misplaces his or her pocket money, why would the teachers bother forking out their own cash to pay for the pupil at the canteen for food if they were bullies?
These were the questions Crispin.
“A crying child came to one of the teachers recently and said that he lost his money and couldn’t eat during recess. The teacher paid for the child. If she was a bully, as claimed by a parent that all teachers in the school were bullies, why should she bother at all? After all, it’s not her child,” he said.
Hence it was not a surprise that he found the words of a parent who called herself ‘Ibu Bapa Sedih’ in a forum carried by a local newspaper (not the Borneo Post) yesterday as uncalled for, discouraging and demotivating.
“It has crushed my teachers’ spirit and enthusiasm to teach. Some have questioned why do they bother working so hard, if they have to endure such a criticism from a mother who used to have a child at the school. It has made me very angry,” he said unhappily.
He described the comments from the mother as one with a negative motive and hatred behind it and that it was probably triggered after seeing a recent police report lodged by the 37-year-old teacher from the school who was slapped by the father of one of the pupils she disciplined also by slapping.
“I don’t agree with the teacher slapping the child. But I also don’t agree with the dreadful way the parent and his son did to disrupt the peace in the classroom. After slapping the teacher, they proceeded to hit the walls, leading to the pupils’ hysteric reaction. Some cried and some were screaming. Can you imagine how terrible it must have been for them? This particular parent (the forum writer) unleashed her anger on the teacher and forgot about the parent who caused havoc in the classroom by his misbehavior,” he said.
The mother of a former pupil at the school mentioned in the forum that said she has a horrendous experience with the school and has dubbed the teachers at the school as bullies.
She alleged that the school authorities failed to address her child’s problem when her child was still schooling there.
She also mentioned of a campaign ‘Stop bullying at schools’ several years ago and questioned what would happen to the school kids if the bullies comprise the teachers. At the same time, she also dubbed the teachers of SK Stella Maris as unaware of the Child Rights Convention (CRC) which calls for the provision of a safe learning environment.
She then urged the director of the Education Department to investigate all complaints and to transfer every problematic teacher at the school.
“Everything that she mentioned in her forum was not as bad as she depicts and reported them to be. And the part about the Mathematics teacher who used a broomstick to hit the table of one of her students, which she said her child allegedly witnessed, was totally untrue. The pupils that were in that classroom clarified this…this parent made the school teachers look like a bunch of bullies,” he said.
He also said that it was untrue that the school did not do anything for her child, as she claimed.
“We shifted her child to another class, because we were told that the child was scared of the Mathematics teacher. If that is not doing anything, then I don’t know what is,” he said.
As for her call to the Education Department to investigate all complaints, Crispin said that the department has already done that and that the officers interviewed the pupils to check what really transpired.
“They did not find anything. If our teachers are a bunch of bullies, then why are we so popular that parents want their children to be admitted to our school? We’re at par with the other best schools in Sabah such as SK St Francis and SK St Agnes.”
“And if we are a bunch of bullies, why do the policemen and lawyers and doctors who have their children here keep quiet? Does she think these people will keep quiet if their child was bullied? I don’t think so. What I feel is she has a motive …she calls us a bad school – if we are so bad, we wouldn’t have been champions in so many competitions.”
He further added that his teachers were committed to their work, and that if he found them to be as problematic as claimed, he will take action himself.
“Why should I allow problematic teachers to stay? It is a problem for the school, but the pupils themselves say that the complaints were baseless,” he said.
On the mother’s complaint that her child was made to stand in front of the school congregation and was ridiculed, Crispin said that he could not remember such an incident.
“But if the pupils do not respect the ‘Negaraku’ and the ‘Sabah Tanah Airku’ and they play around when it is being sung, then, yes, these students will be made to come up to the front,” he said.
He added that the parent’s negative comment has impacted on his teachers’ enthusiasm for teaching.
“My teachers are committed to each student. They want them to do well. They conduct extra classes just to ensure that the students excel. One of our teachers who died several years ago was committed to the end, even though she was very sick. And we even have one with a heart ailment now, and he still has fire to continue guiding the pupils. They are so committed, I sometime have to force them to take a rest. So what does she mean with her allegations?”
He added that in some cases, it was the pupils who come forward and offer an apology for their parents when the latter made huge issues out of nothing.
“Sometimes, our pupils are more mature than their parents…it becomes embarrassing for the pupils when their parents do that,” he said.
Crispin added that the mother’s complaint has further dampened the happiness of the school for winning the recent Action Song competition.
He also reminded the mother that each teacher in the school deals with a minimum 45 pupils per class and in some, above 70 pupils.
“Does she think this is easy? Maybe she feels that by doing so, all the teachers will be out of work?”
He also expressed his disappointment on the newspaper that published the forum as well as three other reports that were flawed in their details.
“In the recent report, it was mentioned that the pupil was nine years old when in fact, the pupil was 12 years old and that the teacher was 27 years old when she was 37. There was no mention of the teacher being a woman. The same newspaper also alleged that we were out to make profit out of the production of our pupils’ name tags by changing the colour every year. We haven’t made changes to the name tags for years and yet, they make these unfounded allegation,” he said.
“They have done this several times to the school. We want an apology from them,” he said.