A stabbing incident at a New Taipei City junior-high school is tragic and infuriating. It has suddenly dawned on people that junior-high and elementary school campuses might not be as safe as they believe, leading many to urge the Ministry of Education to ramp up security. Little do people know that school conflicts are nothing new, and in the past few years, incidents have spiked, with serious ones involving students assaulting teachers. It is an issue that desperately requires attention.
Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) has reminded education personnel to follow the ministry’s guidance and disciplinary rules. If students bring knives or other contraband to school, teachers should immediately report them to school authorities, and the school should report to the ministry.
Pan also asked schools to step up counseling of “red flag” students, as well as offer counseling for students who have been affected by violence. Teachers should also use class time to remind students to take extra caution when playing with toy knives or using sharp stationery utensils.
Pan’s advice rubs salt in the wounds of elementary and junior-high school teachers. Comments from the ministry and its officials were not only boilerplate, but out of touch with individuals’ experiences, and made no attempt to address the root of the problem.
If a student does not wish to follow orders, and even if they assault a classmate or faculty member, teachers are not free to act. When authorities are incapable of doing anything, while parents neglect their responsibility to discipline their children, schools and teachers are left with no other support.
Aside from lambasting the school, the ministry failed to offer assistance.
Teachers are charged with guiding and disciplining students. The problem is that the ministry’s guidance and disciplinary guidelines fail to protect teachers when they impose reasonable discipline on students. They might end up receiving complaints from students or other teachers, or even become targets in campus incidents or controversies.
Facing complaints and grievances, many teachers feel caught in a catch-22.
In an environment where parents are hostile to school faculty, fewer teachers are willing to “meddle in students’ affairs.” It is not because teachers have lost their passion or enthusiasm for education, but that too many disheartening and frustrating controversies concerning student discipline have affected them. Some have been haplessly ensnared in the teacher assessment evaluation system.
Exhausted and backed into a corner, more teachers are steering clear of potential sources of conflict to protect themselves, creating a crisis in Taiwan’s education system.
If students bring contraband to school or commit serious misconduct, teachers dole out punishment, but aside from teachers, should the parents not also share in the responsibility of supervising children?
Teachers should not be blamed for their passiveness, but in an era in which students’ rights are overly protected, even if schools conduct bag searches in accordance with regulations, parents could still file complaints.
When dealing with students who refuse to follow orders, teachers cannot do anything to prevent the teacher-student relationship, classroom management and course schedules from falling into a vicious cycle, aside from giving moral lectures.
In view of the dilemma schools face when it comes to student discipline, as well as the frustration and powerlessness of frontline personnel, these issues cannot be solved with a few words of encouragement or advice from education officials.
The Ministry of Education should tackle the structural problems underlying incidents of campus violence, as well as overhaul regulations and guidelines concerning counseling, while accounting for the frustration of faculty members at schools. It should also increase staffing and resources to help schools deal with campus conflicts.
Regarding recalcitrant students, the government should amend the law and establish penalties for parents who fail to fulfill their duties of disciplining their children.
Unfortunately, while schools are put under the spotlight, few people are actually questioning what has gone wrong with families and parental education. Instead of calling for students to stay late at schools, the presidential candidates should take the lead in reminding the public of the educational purposes of families and to endow parents with more disciplinary responsibility. The decline of parental guidance and lack of support and involvement in children’s education is the underlying cause of campus conflicts.
Lo Te-shui is director of the National Federation of Teachers Unions’ publicity department.
Translated by Rita Wang
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