Learning From Mistakes?

I see myself as a perfectionist, but after working in the real world for so long, I've certainly mellowed down. What's the use of upsetting yourself when things go wrong, despite all your careful planning and meticulous organisation? In the case of my school, things almost always do NOT go as planned! So, I figured that as long as I work in this school, I can either accept things the way they happen, or risk dying young from a heart attack. The truth is, no matter how much we want things to turn out as we expect them to, there are many factors that affect the end result, i.e. other people or unexpected events.

On the other hand, I still think there's a bottom line as to how much we can compromise when things go wrong. Just like in exams, there is a passing mark for every subject, likewise in anything we do, there must be a yardstick to measure if something is a success or otherwise. Too many mistakes means a project/event/plan is a failure.

I can't help but wonder why my school administration doesn't ever seem to learn from mistakes. The same problems persist year in and year out, and despite acknowledging the shortcomings, there was no action taken to improve the situation. It seems as if they have attributed whatever happened to be an act of God, in which case, there's nothing we can do to make things better. Or maybe they just choose to ignore the real problems.

Take, for example, the Co-curricular Day held recently in my school. In conjunction with this day, a futsal tournament was organised for both boys and girls. Matches were held in the morning, and only those involved, which would constitute 10% to 15% of the student population, were allowed to be in the field. Meanwhile, the rest of the students were supposed to be in class for lessons. The problem is teachers were not given the name list of students involved in the tournament, so many of these students took advantage of the situation and skipped classes to be in the field, or somewhere in the school except in their own classrooms. Consequently, no lessons could be carried out properly as the number of students in class could be counted on one or two hands. The sad thing is many teachers also took advantage of this situation to skip classes! Talk about setting a bad example... And here I was, having everything planned for a nice lesson, only to be disappointed when I discovered that only a handful of students were in class!

This happens every year. Days before the event, everything will be planned out nicely on paper, but in reality, nothing goes as planned. For three days in the week, as long as the tournament is not over, lessons come to a standstill. The way I see it, this problem is not difficult to solve. The administration should just make sure that the sports unit prepare a name list of all students involved in the tournament and distribute it to all teachers, so that students do not have an excuse to cut classes. The discipline teacher should also make a few rounds to catch those brave souls who still choose to have some fun outside the class. Those caught should be duly punished for their behaviour.

What irritates me is that the administrators are aware of this problem, but none of them wanted to deal with this with a firm hand. And yet, teachers are always pushed to improve the school's academic performance, which is among the lowest in the country. How can we expect a miracle when there's so much indiscipline in the school? Do you expect the students to excel when they prefer to be anywhere else but in their own classrooms?

I don't think it takes a perfectionist to see that there's something very wrong here. Unless and until we budge from our comfort zones and make some serious changes, history will keep on repeating itself. Come on, people! Do something, if not for yourselves, then for the sake of our students!