Due to a recent incident involving teachers allegedly bullying a student, the Ministry of Education has announced that it would be making amendments to a draft bill against campus bullying.
However, the draft was lambasted by several children’s rights organizations as “missing the point” as half of the articles in the draft talk about investigations and only six articles talk about counseling. Further, the definition of bullying has been expanded while other terms have been given vague definitions.
For student-on-student bullying incidents, one would hope that counseling would become the priority solution.
However, as the proposal involves different areas, such as the campus, home and the wider social environment, among others, execution of the code is sometimes difficult when all aspects need to be covered. As long as the student has not graduated, it remains the school’s responsibility to guide them onto the right path and to realize the principle of delivering education without discrimination.
As for incidents involving teacher-on-student bullying, in the event of an investigation where evidence of bullying, corporal punishment or verbal abuse are found to have taken place, or even the incitement of others to isolate the victim, the teacher should be punished. As the teacher-student dynamic already entails an unequal power relationship, especially at universities, people should recognize any forms of power abuse as bullying once a party feels “abused,” just as with sexual harassment incidents on campuses.
Sometimes a well-intentioned approach becomes distorted by parents or students, leading to polarized interpretations of the same measure.
For example, for the physical education classes that I am conducting, I always expect my students to be engaged and work on skills and teamwork through repetition. I usually set the bar higher, so that students work harder by practicing and get a passing grade.
Further, I also design activities that require two partners or several students working as a group, such as game matches or passing a ball around, and give the students multiple attempts to pass the ball. During these attempts, depending on how dedicated the student is, I occasionally cut them some slack by pausing the stop watch or “increasing” the number of hits so that students can feel a sense of achievement for passing the test and develop an interest in the game. In this way, not only can I boost my students’ confidence, but also reinforce friendship, teamwork and teacher-student rapport.
Students who struggle with coordination, show little interest in physical activity or have poor attendance often mistake challenges as a teacher’s ploy to give them a hard time at school. After teachers announce at the beginning of the semester what is required to pass their final test, they usually give up and no longer show up to class. For these students, their understanding of the purpose of the test probably runs like this: The teacher has it in for students by setting an unreasonably high standard to pass, so that students who fail the test have to keep practicing until they are worked to the bone. When students rant about their feelings to their parents, doting parents usually mislabel this kind of incident as “school bullying.”
Different perspectives always lead to different interpretations. The strawberry generation combined with helicopter parents have turned any good-intentioned teaching plans into malicious acts of school bullying. This is most discouraging and unfair for teachers who have passion and a desire to provide good lessons for students.
Li Cheng-ta is an instructor at Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
Translated by Rita Wang
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