In the wake of increasing media coverage of bullying on campuses, the Ministry of Education yesterday invited 500 high school and vocational high school principals to deliberate anti-bullying measures.
During the ministry’s conference, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) urged the principals not to give up on any student and to establish more channels for students or teachers to report incidents of bullying.
Wu also vowed not to relax the ministry’s “zero corporal punishment” policy despite growing calls for the use of physical punishment to deter bullying in schools.
Wu said if the ministry relaxes the corporal punishment policy students would be sent the wrong message — that violence is sometimes appropriate.
He said the ministry would consider giving teachers more disciplinary power, but the ministry’s firm stance is that there will be no infliction of physical pain on campuses.
When questioned by reporters on the event’s sideline, Wu said all students are “teachable,” and added that schools should make more of an effort to help students understand the legal responsibility they shoulder if they hurt others.
The minister has been bombarded with criticism as more reports of school violence between students, and between students and teachers, surfaced.
The issue began to gain momentum when 62 teachers of Taoyuan’s Bade Junior High School initiated a petition calling for the replacement of the school’s principal for allegedly ignoring bullying on campus.
The principal was later suspended pending investigation, while the case and other reports of bullying prompted the Executive Yuan to order that the ministry propose specific anti-bullying measures.
At a separate setting yesterday, Central Police University’s Department of Crime Prevention and Corrections professor Deng Huang-fa (鄧煌發), who specializes in juvenile crime prevention, said teachers should be given more disciplinary power.
Deng said he believes it is necessary to grant teachers adequate power to discipline students instead of accusing teachers of resorting to excessive or corporal punishment every time a student is disciplined.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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