What's teaching really?

More and more people in Singapore have realized the impact of teachers' role changed from teaching to non-teaching stuff, like preparing festival decorations, putting up shows for external visitors, pupils' administration matters, multiple external functions to publicize the school, showcase of non-stop innovative teaching strategies, professional sharing presentations, etc.

Despite of the overwhelming negative feedback from the public, the local school managements seem not to be affected. They still focus on the extrinsic measurement than assessing more fairly to the devotion of a teacher in the classroom.

I don't mean all those school activities unnecessary. But we as educators may have to take a break and sit back to review the outcome of all those efforts before we move on to make the next innovations. How much percent of the efforts is valid and effective? And how much percent is actually redundant? How much of the those activities benefited our pupils? And how much were just done to please our superiors?

As the Chinese saying says, “内行人看门道，外行人看热闹”。How come I feel those "upstairs people" are still the "外行人"(layman), as they still appreciate more of the noisy, decorative and apparent show than quiet, traditional way of teaching?

If a teacher was driven tired and mad, how could she/he maintain a good mental state and health to help the young minds? If a teacher knows the truth that what she's doing will affect the pupils very little, and she's doing all the innovations for show not for real teaching, but she chooses to obey instead of saying them out, what kind of moral values the teacher is trying to pass down to the pupils?

Being obedient to authority must be right? Then the Chinese should have overthrown their Qing dynasty, shouldn't have accepted the modern reform, shouldn't have gone overseas for new life, because all the happening were not told or encouraged by their ancestors.