LET’S be honest – Malaysians do not need much convincing to watch a Korean drama. We have been doing it since Jewel in the Palace had our grandmothers glued to the television in 2004 and nothing has been the same since.
K-dramas are practically a food group here. We consume them with rice or with teh tarik at 2am when we absolutely should be sleeping.
But Teach You a Lesson on Netflix? This one is different – it demands to be watched. It should probably come with a government health warning and maybe even a group therapy session afterwards.
Here is why every Malaysian – and we mean every Malaysian, not just the drama fans – needs to sit down and watch this show immediately. You will recognise absolutely everything and that should concern you deeply.
The corrupt school administrator who protects powerful parents? The teacher who has a mysteriously warm relationship with students whose families arrive bearing gifts? The bright kid from the wrong postcode who keeps getting passed over for opportunities that somehow always land on the same few desks?
You have seen this. You know someone who has lived this – some of you are someone who has lived it. The drama is set in Korea but the furniture is extremely familiar.
Watch it and try – try – to tell makcik this is purely fiction. Go on. Makcik will wait right here with her teh tarik and her raised eyebrow. Because the bullying scenes will make you uncomfortable in exactly the right way.
Teach You a Lesson does not do bullying the lazy way – one mean kid, one sad kid, lesson learned by episode three. It shows the whole ecosystem.
The bystanders who look away. The teachers who decide it is not their problem. The institution that protects its reputation over its students. The slow, grinding, institutional silence that tells a bullied child that nobody is coming.
If that does not make you want to check on every child in your orbit, makcik does not know what to tell you. Because the good teachers in this drama will absolutely destroy you emotionally. There is a reason the teaching fraternity needs to watch this show specifically.
Not to feel attacked – though some self-reflection is always healthy, free of charge, no PIBG meeting required – but because the drama is ultimately a fierce, furious love letter to teachers who fight the system from inside it.
The ones who stay late, who notice things and who refuse to write off a difficult student because difficult students are usually just students who are struggling in ways nobody has bothered to ask about. Those teachers exist in Malaysia – in enormous numbers. And they deserve to see themselves reflected in something this honest. Because the villain is not who you expect and that is the whole point.
No twirling moustaches. No obvious monsters. The rot in Teach You a Lesson wears a lanyard and attends every meeting and smiles at Sports Day. It files paperwork. It thinks of itself as pragmatic. It has convinced itself that this is simply how things work and anyone who disagrees is naive.
Sound familiar? Because Malaysia’s future is literally sitting in a classroom right now waiting to find out if the system gives a toss about them.
We are not building test scores; we are building humans – the next doctors, engineers, artists and people who will be making decisions about this country when the current lot have retired to their bungalows. Every single one of them needs mental strength, emotional resilience and the radical belief that merit actually means something.
Kids who look at the student next to them – different race, different faith, different economic reality, different everything – and think: that is my person, I have their back.
Teach You a Lesson argues – loudly, dramatically, with excellent cinematography – that none of that is possible in a broken system. And that fixing it requires people who are willing to be deeply, personally and professionally uncomfortable.
So, watch it, cry a little and laugh at how uncomfortably recognisable it all is. Then go be the adult that somebody needed in that drama. The one who stayed. The one who noticed. The one who decided that every child in that room – loud or quiet, polished or rough, from the bungalow or the flat – deserved their absolute best.
Malaysia did not get this far on exam results alone. It got here on the backs of people who genuinely gave a toss.
Be that person. Jangan main-main.
Azura Abas is the executive editor of theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
The Sun Malaysia