Print

Mail

wiki links

Education ministry bans hitting children in school

Teachers who hit their students or otherwise resort to corporal punishment are now likely to get walloped themselves -- by the law, that is.

Fed up with educators who take punishment too far, the Ministry of Education yesterday announced a new policy holding teachers accountable and clearly defining what are and are not acceptable methods of disciplining wayward students.

"Everybody has their own idea of what acceptable punishment involves, and that creates problems," said National Teachers Association general-secretary Liu Chin-hsiu (劉欽旭).

"This is a set of rules explicitly defining how a teacher can address misbehaving students," Liu said.

The association and the education ministry formulated the policy after consulting with experts over five months, Liu said.

The "Observations on the law governing educators' teaching and punishing of students as defined and implemented by schools" (學校訂定與實施教師輔導與管教學生辦法注意事項) draft promises to make short work of teachers whose methods of punishment could be called excessive.

Directly or indirectly inflicting physical punishment on students, as well as threatening, humiliating or intimidating them, are grounds for dismissal, official reprimand, demotion, transferral, suspension, or even civil or criminal proceedings, the draft says.

Teachers are also expressly prohibited from rifling through and confiscating students' belongings without just cause, such as on suspicion that the student possesses weapons, drugs or other contraband.

The restrictions also deny teachers the authority to search a student's person without just cause.

So what can teachers do?

Verbal reprimands, demands for an apology or a written self-criticism and orders to reflect silently while sitting or standing, as long as the student stands for no more than a class period at a time and two hours per day total, are well within teachers' bounds of authority, a press released by the ministry said.

But the methods can't be implemented when school is out of session, it said.

"It's a good start," Liu said by telephone yesterday, adding that the ministry would distribute the new rules to all schools and require them to abide by them.

"Obviously, there are going to be some conflicts -- between how schools in Taipei and Yunlin want to punish their students, for example," he said.

Schools in the city and countryside, where punishment is traditionally harsher, would likely disagree on the new rules, Liu said.

He cited "cultural factors" for the probable clash, saying that rural parents often require schools to discipline their children more harshly than urban parents, who tend to espouse more progressive attitudes.

The legislature outlawed corporal punishment in its revision of the Education Basic Law (教育基本法) last December, while ordering the education ministry and Liu's association to work together to formulate a set of rules to define the ban more clearly, he said.

Describing the policy as a work in progress, he said that it would likely be revised as its implementation exposed difficulties.
This story has been viewed 1705 times.