The Ministry of Education (MOE) yesterday said it would hold discussions with the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and the Ministry of Justice to assess the possibility of making personal data on child molesters available to school authorities to prevent offenders from being hired as teachers in cram schools and after-school centers.
Minister of Education Wu -Ching-ji (吳清基) told the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that he would urge the MOI to establish a database of child molesters so schools and daycare centers can ensure they do not hire individuals with a past history of sexual abuse against children.
The ministry would also issue official documents to schools nationwide instructing them not to hire teachers who were convicted of child molestation, Wu said, adding that child molesters should also be prevented from teaching at cram schools, daycare centers and after-school classes.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) raised concerns about the manner in which the ministry could protect children from convicted offenders after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported on Thursday last week that an elementary school in Renwu Township (仁武), Kaohsiung County, had hired a paroled sex offender as a part-time after-school martial arts teacher.
The report quoted a parent as saying that as the hiring was outsourced, the school was unaware of the teacher’s background. However, after an investigation into the teacher’s personal history, a parent was able to confirm that he was a paroled child molester.
The teacher also taught part-time at six schools in Kaohsiung city and county, the story said, adding that after being apprised of his past, the schools fired the teacher.
In related developments, KMT Legislator Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛) initiated a proposal calling on the MOE to convene a national anti-bullying meeting as soon as possible, while KMT Legislator Chao Li-yun (趙麗雲) called on the MOE to draft an anti-bullying law.
The proposals came after MOE statistics showed there were 4,314 reported cases of bullying between January 2008 and August this year, with about 20,000 students.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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