Those lambasting Tanjong Katong Primary School teachers are just plain ignorant

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

As I await news of the missing teachers and students (one of the missing teachers is the husband of a good friend of mine), I got rather pissed with some armchair critics who blamed this incident on the school because these armchair critics deemed the activity unsuitable for upper primary school students.

Firstly, was the case of the missing students and teachers a result of negligence, poor planning, or a result of having an activity that is apparently unsuitable for upper primary students? No. It was due to a natural disaster. So why are you blaming the school?

Next, could there have been contingencies? You're talking about an earthquake that occurred in a place that is nowhere near an earthquake zone. Up till Friday, the probability of an earthquake happening in Kinabalu is probably the same as an asteroid hitting Singapore and geologist are still pretty baffled by how it happened (the magma rising theory hasn't been verified, and I have my doubts as usually such activity does not trigger such a serious earthquake). If I were to use these people's flawed logic, that means if I were teaching in a classroom and the classroom got hit by an asteroid, I should be blamed for not having contingencies for my classroom being hit by an asteroid. Heck, might as well have contingencies for a 10 storey-high flood or a volcano popping out in the middle of my school since it has similar probability of happening in SG too, right?

Lastly, Mount Kinabalu has been deemed suitable for upper primary students, by agents and the Mount Kinabalu website advised that children proceeding towards the said destination should be at least 10 years old (http://www.mountkinabalu.com). People of my size and fitness who did not train for it also made it up with nothing more than a trekking pole, what's more students who have been very well prepared by so much training. Parents have the option too to not allow their child to go if they are not comfortable with it.

The school has run this programme for a number of years. So if you had issue with them bringing 12 year-olds up, then question the whole thing much earlier, instead of putting the blame on them for something that they can't prepare for. You would have a lot more credibility than this.

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