Mistakes were spotted and rectified immediately

Yangchen C Rinzin

“B” stands for bugger too. But this is not what parents would want to teach their children .

A spelling blunder made in the first few lessons for key stage I (Class PP to III) escaped many eyeballs, but the few who spotted it were alarmed more than finding it funny.

The lesson on spellings against each alphabet had B for Baloon, B for Bugger and U for Umbralla, quite an awful mistake when a lot of preparation and planning had gone into planning and readying the lessons on television.

“We understand the pressure each teacher must be going through yet, this is a basic thing they should get it right,” a parent who spotted the mistake said. “This is not like any other programme, children are learning from it and how is the word ‘bugger’ going to shape a child.”

Another mother in Phuentsholing said that when she noticed her daughter spelling as ‘bugger’ that was when she noticed the mistake. “However, I thought it might be some typo and didn’t complain anywhere.”

Officials admitted the blunder and said they corrected it immediately.

iBEST chief executive officer, Tharchen, who is helping to record lessons with the visual effect, said the mistake happened when editing the videos. “In the interest of time, we had to rush and we had missed this particular error during editing,” he said.

The CEO explained that since the programme has just started, they had to work under a tight schedule where a week’s work had to be completed in a day.

“This is not the fault of the teachers.”

The mistake, Tharchen said, taught them a good lesson. “It has made us work in a systematic way,” he said. iBEST has now started a system in place starting from recording to post-production to quality assurance, and review of the content by a review committee from education ministry before airing the lesson.

“We guarantee that there will be no mistake henceforth.”

The error was immediately rectified before re-telecasting the lesson. However, people managed to take a picture of the blunder and the picture went viral.

The lessons are broadcasted on BBS two at 9am and BBS one from noon everyday.

Teachers who volunteered to present lesson through the BBS shared that they take such incident as positive feedback to be careful next time.

Teachers expressed that if the mistake was noticed, it only meant that parents are watching and concentrating on the lessons. “This also means they give their time and importance to their children,” a teacher said. “We take it positively.”

Meanwhile, a photo of a teacher  teaching on television was photoshopped with a derogatory remark and appeared online yesterday.