Teachers, schools and the general public should pay more attention to signs of child abuse, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) and civic groups said yesterday.
“I was always the nosier kind of teacher and believed it is important to pay close attention to children’s emotions, because perhaps just a little more care could help protect a child from being abused the next day,” Pan said about his own experience as a teacher.
Teachers should actively engage children from high-risk families to help prevent tragedies, he said, adding that the ministry could create incentives for teachers to pay more attention to signs of abuse.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions, the National Parent Education Volunteer Association and the Jing Chuan Child Safety Foundation said that schools should take a more active approach.
Abuse often occurs in disfunctional families, federation president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said.
If schools were friendlier to young mothers, such as by offering childcare and education, perhaps some tragedies could be prevented, he said, referring to a case in which a one-year-old girl was allegedly beaten to death by her 17-year-old mother and two other relatives after spilling a glass of milk.
Most teachers would inform the authorities when they see clear signs of abuse, but due to conflicting views about how to raise children, some people might hesitate if they just see hand or finger marks on a child’s face, fearing they might offend parents, he said.
Schools should hold activities that condemn such violence and encourage children to express their experiences through writing and drawing so that they might reveal abuse, Chang said, adding that such activities could be incorporated into gender equality classes.
“Although teachers could help prevent child abuse by paying more attention, they might also abuse children,” association director-general Wu Fu-pin (吳福濱) said.
Mechanisms for teacher performance evaluations should be enhanced and legislation introduced to encourage parents’ participation in their children’s education, including by defining parents’ obligations toward their children’s education and instituting penalties for those who fail to meet them, he said.
Child abuse can be quickly observed by neighbors, foundation chief executive Lin Yue-chin (林月琴) said.
“The government should educate the public to help people better understand that children are a nation’s assets, not parents’ personal assets, so that people know that everyone is responsible for child protection,” she said.
The government should also review the social safety net, she said.
“In other countries, a social worker could spend an entire month working with one family, but in Taiwan each social worker is responsible for 25 to 35 families. A family is lucky to get one visit from a social worker each month-and-a-half,” she said.
It is also difficult to spot child abuse at home among young children, as 40 percent do not attend kindergartens, she said.
“To save children, government agencies must stop trying to shift the blame and begin collaborating with one another,” she added.
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