An elementary school teacher has been punished and ordered to receive psychiatric evaluation after she forced four pupils to eat chalk, the school announced yesterday.
"We offer our deepest apology to the pupils' parents and the public. We have given the teacher one reprimand and have ordered her to undergo psychiatric evaluation," the dean of the Wenlin Elementary School in Taipei County told reporters.
The incident occurred earlier this month when the teacher, identified as Huang (
Noises
A number of pupils were making noises while she was writing on the blackboard, and in response Huang turned around and shouted: "If you continue talking, I will make you eat chalk!"
Huang tilted some of the pupil's heads backward by pulling their hair, rubbed a piece of chalk across their lips and teeth and forced them to swallow the chalk powder.
Some pupils, scared by the turn of events, began to cry.
Worried
"We are extremely concerned because if she were to lose her temper again, and if she happened to have a pencil or a glass bottle in her hand, she might be tempted to push that into a pupil's mouth too," another pupil's father said on TV.
Some of the pupils in Huang's class still have nightmares because of the chalk-eating incident, their parents said.
Huang refused to apologize for the incident.
"She told us that she could buy each pupil a dozen toothbrushes to clean their teeth, but that she would never apologize," the mother of a student in Huang's class said on TV.
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