As a teacher in Taiwan, I have often witnessed Taiwanese colleagues smacking students for that which I would deem trivial matters. I have often found that Taiwanese teachers get angry at pupils for actions that have no malice, including being sick in the classroom and not performing well in class. In such situations extra help and support is probably what the student needs, not chastisement.
However, I can not agree with plans to ban corporal punishment in schools as reported in your article concerning the alleged abuse suffered by a student at the hands of a teacher in a high school in Taichung ("Calls mount for end to corporal punishment in schools," Nov. 15, page 2). If these reports are true, that the teacher beat the student senseless for something as trivial as failing to hand in his homework on time, then of course the teacher should be properly dealt with. However, banning corporal punishment altogether may not be the right answer.
Increasingly both in the West and the East parents spend less and less time with their children, often because both parents have full-time jobs. The consequences of this is that the child does not get taught that which is right from that which is wrong or even basic grooming and social standards. In the UK now, teachers have often complained of students starting school not even knowing how to use a knife and fork properly. In Taiwan, I have often heard Taiwanese colleges [sic] complain that kids do not know how to use something as simple as a spoon.
Increasingly in Taiwan, parents leave their children in the care of kindergartens while they work full-time. The only time they have a proper chance to spend time with their children is at the weekends, and this often involves spoiling them rotten with candy, toys and video games due to the parents' guilt at not spending enough quality time with their offspring.
Parents work all week in busy and stressful environments, telling themselves that they are doing it to provide a better future for their kids, and yes, materially they are. But emotionally their kids are receiving nothing. Instead these kids are endlessly watching TV and playing increasingly graphic video games. This is where they are learning their values from due to the void left by a lack of adequate parental guidance.
Back in the UK things are completely out of hand. Reports of abuse by gangs of students on both fellow pupils and teachers occur daily. Just recently a gang of schoolgirl bullies in Camberly reportedly stabbed a fellow pupil (one time in the eye) because she had earlier stood up to them when they allegedly threatened to set her hair alight. At night, the streets are full of gangs of yobs, hoodies and "chavs" (slang terms used to describe the members of these gangs of youths) wandering around drinking and engaging in anti-social behavior. There is no parental guidance.
I myself have been victim to a serious crime committed by a gang of these yobs, and I can tell you the law is powerless to stop them. Teachers are too frightened to discipline them because of fear of reprisals from both students and their parents. The parents of these yobs just don't care, because while their kids are wandering the streets, it keeps them out of their hair.
Chief superintendent David Baines of the Greater Manchester police force, who coined the term feral youths, spoke of his frustration and contempt for the parents of a youth involved in a serious attack on a 34-year-old man who stood up to a gang of thugs terrorizing his neighborhood. The parents reportedly did not care that their child had been involved; instead they were more concerned at losing their home as a consequence of it (BBC News, May 17, 2005).
The UK police force is stretched too thinly to properly tackle these gangs, and when they do they are impeded by social workers, left-wingers and liberal magistrates who think that punishing these gangs is far too draconian. While politicians have the support of the public to control these gangs of feral youths, left wing-academics and civil liberties groups threaten legal action against them because they believe that the rights of yobs to congregate on street corners at one o'clock in the morning take precedent over the right of victimized neighborhoods to live in peace.
One only has to look at the pressure left-wing MPs and child charity groups are placing on the government in the UK to implement a law totally banning smacking by parents. Of course most people have been smacked in the past as a child for doing something naughty. It happens, you cry and you apologize and your mother or father forgives you. But to the liberal left, all forms of smacking are morally abhorrent and they believe that if you smack your child once in a while for doing something wrong, you are a monster and should receive a jail sentence for it. Great way to protect those kids who really are the victims of child abuse: Criminalize the law-abiding majority for trying to raise their children into being decent human beings.
Of course violence alone never solves anything, and simply smacking a child will not teach him or her anything, while beating a student senseless because he has failed to hand in his homework is completely unacceptable. But taking away corporal punishment as a last resort will lead down the wrong path. Don't repeat the mistakes of the UK. The adult should always have control, parents as well as teachers. Children are vulnerable and innocent and must be properly raised, loved and disciplined to make sure they can make sensible choices in their life and hopefully pass down this experience and knowledge to their own offspring in the future too.
Adam Coates
Taoyuan
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