Let's face it, Fanny.

My parents used to think as a teacher-with relatively stable income and lots of holidays-I am having a comfortable, easy work life. That's why they find my plan of quitting my job unbelievable (and rather unacceptable).

So if even my parents who see me work myself to exhaustion every day think I'm under no stress or experiencing any form of stress-induced malfunctioning, how can I expect the public who base their impression of teachers on their good old school days or the government officials who hide themselves in an ivory tower to understand our situation?

Tragically, understanding comes at a high cost. Despite repeated comments from teachers, not until two teachers committed suicide within a week did the government suddenly realise we are facing backbreaking stress. And more tragically, not until Fanny Law, permanent secretary of EMB and obviously deprived of political wisdom, raised an offensive question (if the education reform is the real cause pushing the two teachers over the edge, why only two of them committed suicide?) did the government allocate billions of dollars overnight on alleviating teacher stress in order to pacify the angry teachers.

And now, even Bishop Zen expressed his concern over this problem; one can see how politically fashionable the issue is.

So, why were there only two teachers committing suicide if the education reform is the real cause?

The fact is different people react to stress in different ways. Some have insomnia, some have depression, some have gastrointestinal disorders, some have suicidal thoughts and among whom some turn those thoughts into action.

If we put all the negative effects of over-stress into a teacher population pyramid, suicide would be placed at the top as it is the most salient, attention-drawing and serious. So now, this very tip of the pyramid came into the spotlight, but Fanny Law was too ignorant to question whether such a small tip is strong enough to conclude that we teachers are really under unbearable stress and failed to notice the rest of the pyramid beneath that very tip.

I don't want to jump to the conclusion that the two teachers committed suicide solely because of work stress or to question whether two teachers are statistically significant enough to prove that education reform was killing them. In fact, the real cause is not important (Can't Fanny Law realise that?). What's more important is, we are really facing debilitating stress and having ever-mounting workload because of ever-changing education policy and that the government should do something about it.

If we are to believe teachers exert life-altering influence on students, how can we teach students to face life positively if we ourselves cannot maintain a healthy mental status?