Members of the Anti-Bullying Alliance have criticized the Ministry of Education for allowing what they called a worsening bullying situation in the nation’s schools.
During a protest on Saturday, the groups demanded that the ministry hold a national anti-bullying seminar within one month to address the matter.
Referring to an incident in March in which a female student was beaten up by a group of senior-high students in Hsinchu City, head of the Anti-Bullying Alliance Lee Wan-chuan (李萬全) said the incident shocked the public, prompting several netizens to call on people to take to the streets to demonstrate the public’s desire for schoolyards free of bullying.
However, more than two months later, cases of bullying continue to be reported, he said.
Lee said ministry officials could not continue to avoid the issue and asked that the ministry enforce anti-bullying regulations across the board and hold a seminar on the subject.
Protesters asked for the number of counselors in schools to be raised to sufficient numbers within the next three months and that school supervision systems on the way to and from school be reinforced and made more transparent.
Among the protesters was an 84-year-old grandfather.
He said he was unhappy about the verbal abuse that his grandson, who attends an elementary school in Taipei, had been subjected to.
His grandson speaks Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) at school, but was told by his classmates to stop, the man said.
Another protester, a parent from Hsinchu surnamed Chen (陳), said his child had been bullied by an older boy for up to six years, suffering scratches to the face, back wounds, being chased and being hit.
At one point his son even suffered a minor concussion, Chen said.
Chen said the school had not reported the incidents as per regulations because the other boy’s parents were on the parents’ council. Even after they reported the bullying to the police, nothing was done for eight months and the case did not make it to court, he said.
“It makes one feels hopeless,” Chen added.
The protesters ended their march in front of the ministry building and handed the petition to Hsu Wen-chuan (許文娟), an official at the ministry’s Department of Military Training Education.
Hsu said the ministry had already held several national seminars on the subject and encouraged students to report bullying to parents or teachers if they witnessed it or were victims.
Students can also call the ministry’s 24-hour hotline on 0800-200-885 to file a complaint, Hsu said.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater