"The failure of generations of Chinese Singaporeans to master Chinese is not the failure of students, but of the teachers."

I would like to comment on her last sentence. In my opinion, no matter how terrible she claims her teacher to be, no teacher wants their students to fail. Teaching is not an easy job and at times, quite a thankless job because parents and students nowadays are hard to please. Teachers always get the blame when the students do not do well but the fact of the matter is if the students do not want to learn, there is really nothing much that the teachers can do to help. As the saying goes, "God help only those who help themselves.".

I also want to being up a common complaint among the students. "The lessons are boring," is a common cry. Students expect their teachers to do a lot of things to make the lesson more interesting. The problem is the students just know how to rave and rant about it, they do not suggest to the teachers on what they can do and expect magic to happen overnight.

At the end of the day, one thing is very clear, teachers and the students must work hand in glove to make things happen. And in all that we do, we must always learn to compromise and put ourselves in the other person's shoes.