old news, i know, but i think it’s sad to hear what happened to this teacher. no doubt what she did was at some level illegal, but she wouldn’t have been able to demonstrate otherwise had she gone through the normal channels.

melanie hewlitt of the singapore review puts it thusly:

Its form over substance that counts in Singapore. You come here, worked hard, did things their way, performed and delivered the goods. Even the “customers” (i.e. parents and students) were happy.

But no, that’s not enough. You are not measured on your performance here. They need a piece of paper to measure your ability. You dont have that paper and that means you have failed on this technicality.

“Only in Singapore do we have a government that is so engrossed with the accumulation of paper qualifications, that they have long since forgotten the original objective behind the education system, and have instead identified the means as an end to itself. In their blind pursuit of their version of a utopian society, educational elitetism takes center stage above all else, eclipsing the actual needs of the labour market itself.”

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sg_Review/message/1

If Ms Wen had that piece of paper, she would not have been fined or persecuted even if all her students had failed their exams. Its form over substance that counts here and a persons worth is reduced to what is printed on a piece of paper, to the exclusion of all else.