To address some of the cultural roots of teacher stress and offer a solution, I would like every principal to ensure that their staff takes a minimum of three weeks break every summer - uninterrupted break. And shorter breaks mid-year. I meet dozens of local teachers every week and they simply look at me suspiciously when I suggest they lobby for a holiday. Some even say to me that 'We must do our best to keep our schools open'. In saying that they mean they must attend every day of the year.

Pity the students whose teachers are tired. Pity the parents who want the best for their offspring when the teachers are mice on a treadmill that never stops. Pity the teachers.

I believe a valuing of holidays is absent in the local culture and there is an urgent need for principals to change that.

And there is an urgent need for the EMB to change the underlying perceptions of what it means to give service as a teacher.

DES MORIARTY,

Teacher, Ma On Shan

One death is one too many

Permanent Secretary for Education Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun draws comfort from - in her view - the relatively few pupils and teachers who commit suicide - seeking only, she claims, to protect the educational reforms which represent her political capital. I am not convinced. One dead child or one dead teacher is one too many.

Neither do I accept the wonders of reform at face value. Certainly the government has a state-of-the-art, word-perfect, task-based curriculum framework. This, however, appears to have been imported lock, stock and barrel from western sources and betrays little, if any, evidence of the awareness, need or ability to adapt it to Chinese educational culture.

Teachers, whose professional abilities have been constantly derided by officialdom, are somehow expected to implement this top-down, sophisticated yet remote, paint by numbers framework, despite the innumerable systemic constraints imposed by the very same authorities. These constraints, such as the dominant all pervasive examination system, stakeholder pressures, large class sizes and particularly the short 35 minute primary school lessons, render genuine, learner-centred, cross-curricular thematic work next to impossible.

The authorities are therefore demanding compliance to a framework that they certainly could never have devised themselves, probably could not implement themselves and in whose path they place the most considerable obstacles.

The intense pressure to conform to these treatise-like reforms also ignores the long-held realisation that it is impossible to prove scientifically that any one teaching method is superior to any other.

Less dogmatism, more guidance and an acknowledgement of school realities and a touch of compassion might become EMB better.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

Single error should not mean the end

To err is human.To forgive is divine. I am surprised to see the development of recent controversies over education issues which become more and more sensational and irrational just because a devoted educationist has said something wrong.

We all agree that teachers face immense work pressure. So does every one of us in the work setting. Is it fair to put all the blame of education issues to one person (Fanny Law)? Would her resignation solve the problems?

We must first ask the question of what is going wrong in education and how we should sort out the problems together for the benefit of our children. I hope our respectable teachers would treasure life and be more rational, to set a good example to their students.

CHAN SIU-BO

Sai Kung