Education agencies as well as teachers and parents associations have thrown their support behind a teacher who was acquitted on privacy infringement charges after inspecting a student's backpack.
The support came in the wake of a lawsuit filed by the parents of the student against the teacher, surnamed Lei, for violating their child's privacy by searching the student's backpack.
Lei works at a junior high school in Taipei City.
The child's parents sought NT$1 million (US$31,000) in compensation.
However, the Taipei District Court ruled in favor of Lei on the grounds that searching backpacks was part of a teachers' duty when providing student counseling and guidance.
right
Yang Yi-fung (楊益風), a spokesman for the National Teachers' Association, said that teachers have the right to conduct searches in accordance with a tobacco and drug prevention project formulated by the Ministry of Education.
He added that if there was a problem, the responsibility lies with policymakers, not policy implementers.
The spokesman said that from a legal perspective, there was nothing incorrect about the teacher's behavior, and urged the public not to blow the incident out of proportion.
Legitimate
Meanwhile, Lin Wen-hu (
But he stressed that teachers should be supervised by a class representative or a third party while conducting a search of a student's personal property.
An official with the Taipei City Government's Department of Education also noted that teachers and instructors are empowered to search students' backpacks in the event of emergency situations or for the sake of campus safety.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS