In a move to address recent cases of corporal punishment being used in schools, Taipei City's Department of Education said it was planning to initiate a program to counsel teachers who use physical punishments.
Under the proposed program, municipal schools will submit a list of teachers who have handed out physical punishments to students or who have shown signs of emotional disorders. The teachers would then be requested to attend counseling sessions.
Department of Education Commissioner Kang Tsung-hu (康宗虎) said the department hoped the program would help teachers better tackle the problems they face at school and guide them in handling their classes appropriately.
“This is not a ‘black list’ as some may think. We think counseling is the best way to stop cases of physical punishment at schools,” he said when giving a report on the proposed program at Taipei City Council.
The department proposed the program in the wake of a case last month, when a 40-year-old teacher at Taipei Mandarin Experimental Elementary School repeatedly slapped a nine-year-old student in front of the class after the boy denied touching another boy's groin when they were playing.
The teacher later apologized for his actions and said he “lost his temper” when he punished the student.
Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Hung Chien-yi (洪健益) yesterday accused a teacher at Taipei San Hsin Elementary School of asking first-grade students to slap each other as a punishment.
The teacher also humiliated students in front of the class, calling them “idiots” or “stupid kids,” he said.
“Situations like this happen at many schools and these teachers should not be teaching our children. The department needs to handle problematic teachers better than simply transferring them to another class or school,” he said.
Statistics from the department showed that there were an average of three to 10 cases of inappropriate punishments performed by teachers each year and a total of nine teachers in Taipei were given major demerits as a result from 2006 to last year.
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