Ministry of Education figures released on Monday show that the number of teachers found to have sexually assaulted or harassed students at public schools has increased, with 83 suspected sexual assault cases reported last year alone.
K-12 Education Administration Division of Student Affairs and Campus Security head Lin Liang-ching (林良慶) said the issue has to do with an unbalanced power dynamic between teachers and students, which is true in most sexual offenses. However, his suggestion that teachers know where to draw the line when it comes to advances from students oversimplifies the problem.
Even if a person in their early 20s is teaching a third-year high-school class, they should consider themselves the students’ guide and mentor, rather than a peer. Failure to think this way indicates that the teacher is not mature enough to be head of a classroom, whether due to insufficient training or mental unpreparedness. If a teacher is aware of the distinction between themselves and the students, but engages in a relationship with a student regardless, this could mean they are taking advantage of their authority — meaning they are a threat and should not be in the classroom.
An article published on the Psychology Today Web site on Nov. 14, 2017, said that “when someone rapes, assaults or harasses, the motivation stems from the perpetrator’s need for dominance and control.”
As Lin said: “There is no such thing as a student-teacher romance.” No relationship between a teacher and a school student is acceptable.
However, some cases are never reported. This could be for many reasons: The student is in shock and unable to act, the teacher could be threatening to fail the student if they report them, or the student might feel that nobody would believe them.
Perpetrators often “confuse and control [victims] by dangling enticements with one hand and wielding threats, implied or explicit, with the other,” the article said.
It is not unreasonable for a student to be concerned that they might not be believed.
Humanistic Education Foundation executive director Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭) said that a common response by parents when allegations of assault surface is to question whether their child did anything to create a misunderstanding.
Author Lin Yi-han (林奕含), who committed suicide two years ago and who was thought to have been sexually assaulted by a teacher, never came forward about the assault. The allegations only arose after her book on the topic was published and her subsequent suicide.
To tackle abuse of children at schools, the threat must be removed before incidents occur.
An article published by online journal Phi Delta Kappan on Sept. 24 last year suggested a tiered approach. Teachers’ colleges could be required to provide better training on “appropriate professional boundaries, as well as bystander responsibility.”
Schools could also improve screening of candidates by asking open-ended questions during interviews about student-teacher relationships and when it is appropriate to touch a child. Schools could also use training partners who have expertise in sexual abuse prevention to work with schools on guidelines, help train part-time and full-time instructors, and assist schools to establish supervisory mechanisms, the article said.
Schools could ensure that teachers are not left alone with students, and that any suspicious activity witnessed by fellow teachers — including teachers providing transport for students or spending an excessive amount of time with them — be reported.
Teachers are invaluable in contributing to a child’s development, but a safe environment is needed for good educators, as well as for students.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs