JULY 22 — The death of three-year-old Nawal Iris Samsudin, who was left unattended by her teacher-mother in her parked car at the school on a sweltering day, casts a spotlight on something well-known to education watchers but given little heed by the Education Ministry.

The ministry’s backward attitude towards a tragedy involving members of the teaching fraternity is one of those appalling stories from which nobody emerges well.

Nawal’s death is not just another case of death in a hot car after which everyone goes home. If the mother, who had left her in the car to rush off for a school meeting, is found guilty, she might go to prison.

Her life is more or less at an end, but for the ministry, the tragedy should cut straight into the heart of the never-widening story of overworked teachers.

Clearly, the ministry has messed up what is perceived as the most basic aspect of how teachers live. Its obsession with results-driven objectives, at the expense of the state of mind of teachers, has seen it drive the educational system into the gutter.

To it, such matters have become complicated issues prone to unhelpful generalities.

Like any civilised person, I grieve at the death of Nawal but I have to ask:

● Has the workload increased immensely for teachers that some are beginning to lose the instinct that a child is in trouble?

● Did Nawal’s mother have a stressful schedule that she forgot her daughter was sleeping in the car?

● How many more like her are around? Should they be in the educational system at all?

Rightly, the ministry should have zeroed in on overworked and stressed out teachers after a similar tragedy in Tampoi, Johor, in June last year when an English-language teacher left her four-year-old child in her car for six hours.

Nawal’s mother is inconsolable after accidentally leaving her daughter inside a roasting MyVi for five hours. The temperature outside at the time was averaging 34° Celsius and the heat inside the car reached life-threatening levels quickly.

You’d think the temperature in the office of the director-general of the Education Ministry after the tragedy would have risen as well, but there has only been dark silence.

Perhaps, now ministry officials will realise the heat is on them and that they had the worst week in Malaysia. Wake up!

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.