今非昔比，现在的教师真的不好当。

Met up with some secondary school table tennis friends last Saturday. As 社会新鲜人, it was not surprising that our job experiences dominated the conservation. The most ‘exciting’ experience belongs to that of a 6-month old primary school Chinese teacher.

Teachers these days, unlike in the past, are barred from criticizing the students. Criticism these days has to be packaged. According to my friend, it’s like a hamburger; the meat in the middle is the criticism and it must be put together with the vegetables and bun to make it digestible by others, especially the parents. She tried to put this art into practice, on a student with poor penmanship. During a meet-the-parent session, she commented to the parent: “你的孩子很有绘画天分，写的字龙飞凤舞。”The parent, who did not catch the hidden meaning, seemed happy and thanked my friend.

Gone also were the days where teachers could punish students physically. I still remember when I was in primary school, my Chinese teacher would punish us with a ruler whenever our scores for 听写 was below a certain score. This forced us to study and though I disliked and was scared of her at that time, I must admit that today, I am thankful for that as it really made me study and built up my Chinese foundation. These days, however, kids are treated as “bosses” and teachers are not supposed to lay a finger on them. As a result, the kids are not that afraid of teachers, especially the young, female ones, like my friend. Her students like to tease her and some even got physically friendly with her, like patting (slapping?) her back.

Apart from that, teachers these days have to put up with “abuse” from students (including vulgarities and noise) and parents. I remember that we were not like that in the past. Even though we may not like some teachers, we would still respect them. These make one wonder what happen to kids these days? Maybe my school environment has been different and thus I have not experienced such. Perhaps all these explain the high turnover rate of teachers. I really salute current teachers and am fortunate that I gave up my ambition to teach a long long time ago.