"Education" system

Just came back from holding an outreach session at West Coast Park and I want to talk about something that's on my mind.

A 12-year-old kid who is in Primary 6 came up to me with much curiosity while his parents were fishing nearby. The boy was seemingly interested in astronomy as he was asking many questions about the subject matter and even helped out with the outreach by telling passerbys what he saw and urged them to come have a look through the telescope. You could tell that he was hardly able to contain his excitement. When the crowd dwindled, we traded stories with each other. We hit it off real well and hours had gone by just like the wind.

Then the boy shared a poignant story about his school. The story took place during the partial solar eclipse that was viewable in Singapore last year. Apparently, his school had planned to view the partial solar eclipse that day but some of his classmates, including himself, were mischievous and that had got the entire class under detention thus missing the entire spectacular moment.

Personally, I feel that the school should have let the students enjoy the event first and mete out any punishments later.

Moral of the story - you can postpone a disciplinary action, but you cannot postpone a celestial phenomenon. Set your priorities straight.

I will neither name the boy nor identify the school. I am sharing this story with all educators out there so that such mistakes can be avoided in the future.