A Scout, A Teacher - and Blackmail

To start this off, this is a serious post. This is not satire, nor is this a joke. This is completely true.

It's pretty old news to some people by now. But it's come to my attention that no one's made an official complaint, and no action has been taken. This worries me. So DU students, please read this because you have to know this.

Anyway, to understand this story we have to go back to early in the year to SMKDU's Sports Day 2010 - if you recall, the Scouts won the marching competition for the first time in a long while.

Some time later, after the first semester exam if I'm not mistaken, a Scout (let's call him Mr. C) went to his biology teacher (let's call her Cik S.) to ask if his nearly-A paper could be pulled up one grade.

And you know what Cik S. said?

She said she would pull his grade up, if (and here's the part that's utter garbage) he admitted that the Scouts copied the PKBM's marching formation for Sports Day.

If your reaction is along the lines of 'what the shit', then you know what a stupid thing this Cik S. has done.

About the Marching

It's not the issue. Number one, I don't believe the Scouts copied the PKBM's formation because, number two, the PKBM does not own a formation (its formation being a recycled routine re-used year after year). Criss-crossing, salutes and stomps are basic components of any marching formation - these simple moves are what the PKBM uses, to my knowledge, and there is no copying to be done. If they had done something actually novel, such as, say, a backflip of some sort, then there may be merit to this claim - but they did not as far as I can tell.

Which brings us to number three. If the Scouts decided to 'copy' the 'formation' and use the supposed same routine the PKBM did, then the fact that they won means that they simply did it better. Simple as that.

In summary, copying here would be bad if it was intellectual theft. The formation was not creative and did not 'belong' to the PKBM, therefore no theft occurred. And this is assuming they did copy the formation, which I don't think they did.

However, this isn't really the problem with what Cik S. did - but I talked about it in case anyone wants to argue about it.

The Real Problem

Well, what's the truly bad thing here?

1) Cik S. was trying to get Mr. C to admit to something he doesn't believe in, as a condition for doing something.

2) When deciding whether or not to award extra marks for this sort of situation (a nearly-A paper for example), a teacher may usually go by the person's conduct, attitude in class, work ethic etc. But instead, what Cik S. is doing is subjecting the decision to whether or not she gets what she wants.

3) Whether or not the Scouts copied anybody's formation is irrelevant to exam marks. It's bloody ridiculous. It's a sham and worse, it throws a bad light on the school  - my former, much-respected school.

4) Trying to coerce a false statement from someone, under threat of not doing something that would help said person, probably amounts to blackmail. That's right, you read that correctly.

Blackmail. I'm saying Cik S. is essentially blackmailing Mr. C - say this and give me my satisfaction or else I'll not give you that A!

5) What does this say about a teacher? I respect the profession of teaching. In Malaysia it used to mean so much - in the History books you read about all the intellectuals who fought for Independence - the smart graduates went to work in their fields. But the best became teachers. And look at this teacher now. Cik S. is supposed to help students, not fulfil her apparent disdain of the Scouts or derive personal pleasure at the possible expense of a student's exam grade.

Now, this isn't to say that Mr. C deserves that A. Maybe he's been a good student, maybe not. But the bad thing is that Cik S. didn't weigh it based on him. She weighed it based on her demands, and that's horrible.

Now What?

Well, I demand this teacher be punished accordingly. From what I hear, she is now in charge of the Asrama students at school. Well, take that away. I don't think this merits a sacking (and she is a greenhorn teacher fresh out of her studies after all) but it does merit a strong, strong reprimand.

I just want all of your reading this to know about this - and hopefully you'll let other people know too, all the former students of DU who miss their school and want things to go right there.