HOUGANG — In a devastating blow to both phonetic instruction and school hallway dignity, educators across the country have formally admitted that it is literally impossible for any student or staff to pronounce the word “cork” correctly within a school building.

“No matter how clearly you articulate it, it always comes out sounding like a noun, an adjective or a verb,” said Mrs. Lenora Lim, a secondary school English teacher who reportedly blacked out mid-sentence trying to explain how cork is harvested. “Last week I said ‘wine bottle oak cork’ during a lesson, and three students fainted.”

“It’s phonetic chaos,” said Mr Dave Tan of Rooseside Secondary School. “A Secondary 1 kid tried to say ‘wine cork’ during his class presentation. Half the class thought he swore, the other half thought he summoned a goose, and the vice principal just quietly walked into this chaos.”

Efforts to reframe the word using euphemisms like “bottle plug,” “sealed cap thingy,” and “wine-nozzle-stopper-doodad” have proven only marginally effective, with one student accidentally inventing a new slur in the process.

Experts blame a combination of A.I. induced existential anxiety and the universal childhood instinct to ruin every vowel sound in the presence of authority.

At press time, the nation’s schools were quietly replacing all references to “cork” in curricula with “bark cap” and “please just don’t say it”, while one brave teacher was reportedly unable to continue his lesson after attempting to pronounce “fork,” “pork,” and “corkboard” in the same sentence.