Just been through a reflection course for BT (beginning teachers, and yes, I hate that acronym) yesterday. Not that I would require any reflection course to teach me how to reflect since I am very certain that I'm pretty reflective myself. But it does provide me with the opportunity to have a 3 hour blank space to reflect upon many things while not paying attention to the reflection course, ironic isn't it?

I was reflecting on the course. Why am I there? Just because I'm a BT I'm automatically selected for this series of course? Is it because it makes things simpler administratively to just make it compulsory? Is it because the upper management would feel that by going through all these nonsense courses, it would have equiped us with all the necessary tools to handle the trials and tribulations of a teaching career? Why would the course be necessary in the first place? Are young Singaporeans so poor at managing their own lifes? Or jobs are getting ever more demanding? Is it because of high turnover rate for beginning teachers, those who quit after 3 years of bond?

Tons of questions in my mind and at times I wished I have a bird's eye view on the top to sort things out. You see, we are not qualified to raise these questions in the first place because we don't know better. And since we don't know better we can't come out with better solutions/suggestions. Since we cannot possibly give constructive criticism we have to hold our peace. Otherwise we will be seen as partisan players, like mb who 'distorts' the truth and got suspended.

But why did mb blog? I know he started almost 8-9 years ago with his version of Singapore National Education. His articles were widely circulated through email. I had been following it since my army days, 8 years ago! Did mb blog to become famous? But he started blogging before anyone heard of the term blog. I digressed.

We were only taught to do reflections on negative events that happened in school context. Not to reflect on irrelevant stuff like these.

Meanwhile, recent events proved that mb was spot on that we are really "up on progress". Despite reporting healthy earnings of over 100 millions of dollars, some I shall not name public transport companies in Singapore had applied to increase fares that would hit Singaporeans the most (Tourist would not be affected since the price adjustment is mainly limited to adult EZ link fares). Hooray for Singapore, the global city. Let's wait for PTC to respond.

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