My books were flung by an angry teacher out of a hall of hundreds of children. I was made to stand on tables, and outside classrooms holding my ears, all for simple mistakes.

Thirty years ago, I cringed on so many occasions when my children brought home tales of similar mental abuse and humiliations from their teachers.

Fast forward to the first week of January 2008. On his third day of school experience, my six-year-old grandson was made to stand up in the hall of a few hundred children to face public ridicule and punishment for the grand crime of forgetting to take along a storybook for silent reading. Within the same week, he was also punished for whispering to a friend in class.

We celebrate the part of our education system that achieves top Baccalaureate scores, top mathematics prizes and science awards. However, a successful education process must also produce strong, confident, compassionate and happy human beings. The school is one of the pillars in this process, and teachers are role models.

Educators ought to awaken a love and joy for learning rather than instil a fear in it, kindle the imagination in our children rather than shut them up, consider their feelings so that they will grow up with empathy for others. Create disciplinary boundaries, but within a model of nurturing and cultivating the whole person.

A single campaign for teachers towards this goal will be more powerful in the long run than multiple campaigns reminding adult Singaporeans to be kind, polite and considerate in not littering and not spitting. Nurturing this quality of our people will better prepare our country for the escalating progress ahead. It will also develop a civic society, a nation of cultured people who will love and identify with their country because of the wonderful memories of their childhood days in school.

Madam Lee Choon Hong