Dear Sir/Mdm,
I refer to the article “Poly students in homemade sex video gets counselling” (ST, Feb 22 06).
I am appalled to read that the discipline teacher of the said junior college was bestowed with the authority to conduct “handphone raiding”, i.e. investigating the contents of mobile phones without the owners’ permission, on 5 students in the last half year.
The article noted that one student was unabashed with the circulation of her photographs as she deemed them artistic. Unlike the possession of lewd and obscene materials such as pornographic magazines and VCDs, artistic nudity does not fall within the same category. The former is an obvious breach of local legislation whereas the latter is not. In fact, many Singaporeans were reported to have paid for artistic nude photographs of themselves taken by professionals for personal keepsake in the wake of Mr Steve Chia’s incident in 2003. Mr Steve Chia was not charged for the possession of the nude photos of his maid and himself.
By conducting unauthorised investigation into the students’ handphones, the teacher concerned had infringed the privacy of these students when the photographs could have been merely artistic nudity meant for personal viewing and keepsake. It could also cause potential embarassment to the students for the photographs were never meant to be shared with a teacher. I would personally cringe at the thought of someone sieving through even my personal messages without my permission.
Handphone raiding is socially unacceptable and generally considered an extremely rude behaviour even amongst friends. It is akin to gaining unauthorised entry into one’s email account and is evidently an infringement of one’s privacy. What is MOE’s stand on such practices and whether educators should be empowered to probe into personal materials of students? Whilst it is imperative that educators inculcate the right moral values in our children, we should be mindful not to overstep the boundaries of our jurisdiction.
You really love writing such stuff eh. :P
i agree totally. (to both, that is.) haha
Oh well, seems like it’s not going to be published. Still too conservative a nation.
yes. definitely not going to be published. we still cant point fingers at the MOE yet, the nation’s not ready for it.
It’s definitely worth a read. Damit. I’ll print it and paste on the walls of MOE.
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