What struck me most about this article was the Vogon-like response from the teachers. These students seem like well-brought-up, thoughtful kids, and in an American or European school there is often a ‘school pet’ whose function is to teach kids responsibility and kindness towards animals.
Now OK, you get bad teachers everywhere, but it disturbs me that there are way too many of these sub-par individuals working in Taiwan’s public schools (I’ve heard stories like this first-hand) teaching kids to be subhuman and priggish. And they’re in a job for life.
I’m not sure what the point of my post is beyond having a good whinge. I suppose I’m hoping you teachers out there can tell me you’re doing something - just little things, maybe - to redress the balance when the students are in your classrooms.
Okay, in defense of teachers everywhere, it was actually the “administrators” who called the dog catchers. But still, we teachers don’t do enough to teach our next generation how to be responsible to the other residents of our planet!
Notice also the nice little kicker: that their own classmates said these kids were lazy and troublemakers, meaning probably they are not robots who only study, but actually look around themselves and have awareness that life is other than books and tests and grades and class ranking. Probably they are not number one in class rank but they are smarter than the rest in terms of both actual cognitive skills -see a problem, solve it- and emotional intelligence.
Probably those words were put there by the reporter, as a way or warning otehr kids not to follow this example and “rebel” against nonsense and lack of compassion. Heaven forbid.
May all the blessings cover their little hearts and shield them from a heartless school environment that does not foster their natural human tendencies.
Exactly - that’s why I didn’t allow the teachers “we were only following orders [from the administrators]” defence (if it is a defence). Most of the class are well and truly indoctrinated that other beings (note that they have generalised to their fellow non-conformist human classmates) are just a huge nuisance.
They’re also so oblivious to the world around them (and to logic) that they don’t know that looking after three dogs in the face of hostility from an entire class and their teachers is not something that “lazy” people do.
Sigh. And these are the utter halfwits and petty-minded morons who will be “teaching” my child in a few years. I’m going to need to develop some SERIOUS callouses on my forehead, for I foresee some SERIOUS headbutting going on in the not-too-distant future.