Teaching Integrity

I thought this little bit of news is quite amusing.

As reported in the New Straits Times, the Integrity Seminar organised by the Ministry of Education together with the Malaysian Institute of Integrity, was attended by some 440 teachers from all the schools in the city and Putrajaya.

These were some of the responses from the teachers:

"Integrity is a life-long process. I don’t know how we are going to learn about it and teach it in five hours.

"Virtues are not picked up in school, but at home from the family," said a primary school English teacher, who wished to remain anonymous.

"I don’t know how my headmaster will implement this in my school," said the sole representative from his school.

Another primary school Bahasa Malaysia teacher, who did not want to be identified, said the seminar was pointless and ineffective.

"No one is even paying attention to the lectures. I don’t know what seminars like these will do for the country."

I think both the Ministry of Education as well as the Malaysian Institute of Integrity needs to be going back to the drawing board, or we'll just be wasting both the teachers' valuable time as well as our public funds.