Blogging and the Younger generation of Malaysia

UPDATE: 23 October 2007
One of the comments posted under this subject was from the blogger claiming to be the student in question. She sent me an email explaining the circumstances and requesting privacy on the contents of her email. All of which, a responsible blogger will respect.
She also did mention and specifically noted that the issue has passed and she has learned a lot from the episode, for which she paid compliments to the school authorities and her parents on the handling of the matter. In her opinion, the press had blown the matter out of proportion, whether or not the press was tipped off by the parents of the accused student or not was not known.
The good thing, is we have a responsible 16 year old blogger who knows that to blog responsibly and to stand by one's writing is a good principle to start with. What others perceive you to be is entirely up to them. Life goes on, and for this girl, she has chalked up a star in the subject of life!

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Having spent a good part of the evenings with David Sasaki, GVO Outreach in the past two days, I cannot help but notice this story carried in The Star today. The one phrase commonly heard in the past two days was 'Fear Factor'. In yesterday's forum, attended to by only one representative of the main stream media, Nanyang Siang Pau, was testament that there is a very real presence of fear. This despite having two other newspapers confirming their attendance. Fear of your boss calling you up and asking you to remove your story, or even edit the entire story to please the higher ups exists, make no mistake about this.
But today, in The Star, we have this. A typical Malaysian example of 'How to kill the messenger 101'. Instead of encouraging our next generation to speak up in cases of injustice, we ask them to keep quiet and raise the issue 'silently', or raise the issue quietly! Is there such a way? For far too long, we have been told to do it diplomatically, to approach the issue in a manner where we have a safety net, to safeguard the image of the teachers.

I say this, if indeed the students cheated, and the teacher condoned it knowingly or not, punish them. If this blogger was slanderous and posted the subject with ill intentions, by all means censor her. Did they even investigate the subject before hearing out the parents of the accused?
I wouldn't want to generalise on the protective parents syndrome for now, but if this young blogger is standing by her version of the story, I would like to hear it from her.

We must encourage our young to speak up when it matters! Ruffle the feathers if it needs to.
Our lawyers did that, and I think every Malaysian should too!