Should Teachers Seek to Convert Pupils?

Read the above in the Straits Times forum.

There was this person who wrote in and complained that a teacher is trying to convert a friend's daughter through msn to christianity when she is a buddhist. Then she carried on to suggest that MOE should regulate teachers through MSN even.

Agreed that teachers shouldn't be doing such a thing to a student if the matter really happened. But is the matter just restricted to the fact that the teacher was a teacher?

Is it slipping into the area of religion already? Is the teacher asking the kid to listen to him because he is a teacher?

How about the fact that the public wants the teachers to be nurturing and helpful to the kids? Are we simply discounting teachers when they are trying to reach out?

I am not a christian, in fact i am more atuned to buddhism but the matter of issue now is the fact of the poor treatment of the public towards teachers nowadays.

I remember issues when teachers were taped tearing the assignment of students and were condemned of the act. The student was innocent and should be forgiven as he was young. Nothing was done to address the fact that he was not serious in his work. Nothing was done to credit the teacher when she was trying so hard to make a connection, even if it were in the negative way.

How about the teacher who was cursed by many people when a student was punished for calling her a bitch? What should be the people looking after the students do then?

If the job of an educator were to teach and educate? What should be the way to do it? By referring the kid for counselling or giving he/she a good "thrashing"?

Can we ask ourselves, as we were through much, that which of the above would make much more of an impact?

I am not even talking about the respect that the public should give to the teacher... not of parents who call the schools and demand teachers to do their jobs for them. The kid is spoilt and the teacher should do something when it is the parents who face them more often. How about the teacher who gets blamed when the student does not do work?

Yeah it may be biased of me... well its bound to be but does not all of the above make some kind of sense in the gut? Blame me for my instinctive arguments then....

Or is it propaganda that is destroying all the good general image of teachers nowadays?