"Principal's ITE advice 'had to be delivered'"

Principal's tone to Sec 5 students plainly wrong

Individual counselling would have been better

Recently, there was this news article about a principal who, according to the Straits Times, told her N-levels students to consider the ITE route instead.

Understandably, a lot of people were upset, and there are quite a few comments in the ST Forum where people posted their views.

RAdm Lui supported the principal's message, saying that the students had to separate the content from the style, but others said that what the principal did was wrong, or at the least, highly insensitive.

Hmm... think both sides have their valid concerns. If I remember correctly, RAdm Lui said that in the outside world people aren't always going to be kind, so the students must learn to separate the valid stuff from the wrong stuff.

But, yes, such a statement by the principal would have damaged the students' self-esteems and may have a self-fulfilling effect.

However, the whole debate seems to have one major assumption: that going to ITE is a Very Bad Thing.

How would an ITE student feel about ITE when he/she reads the debate? ITE is a wonderful educational institution after all - I like their ads very much - some people are really gifted with their hands, whereas others are really gifted with other talents... we all need one another in order to "achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation"!

Perhaps our educational system needs to examine its effectiveness through this incident... have we, as a society, forgotten our responsibility to balance between helping our youths discover and develop their own unique talents and skills versus helping them acquire employable labour skills in fitting with projected market demands?

We mustn't forget that in the end, Singapore has no resource but its own people. Let's do our part to be better stewards of the people entrusted to us, to help them find their niche in life and succeed.