Although the Ministry of Education (MOE) banned the use of corporal punishment against students two years ago, 45 percent of students polled in a recent survey said they were still being physically punished by teachers.
The poll released last week was conducted by the Humanistic Education Foundation among 1,550 students from 250 junior high schools nationwide, and showed that 7.2 percent of respondents had been physically punished on more than 10 occasions.
Another 5.5 percent said they had been punished so many times they could not remember the exact frequency.
A total of 88 percent of the schools in the poll were found to have physically punished students, up from 71 percent in a similar poll last year.
About 46 percent of the interviewees said their teachers called them “idiots” or “pigs.”
Up to 51.9 percent of students said they were punished because they failed to meet academic standards or failed to turn in their homework as required, while close to half of the students said they were punished for misbehaving.
Respondents said the punishment included copying texts, running around school sports fields or standing at one’s seat or against the wall for a period of time.
MOE Secretary-General Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said the ministry would refer teachers who were found to have physically punished students to the Control Yuan for discipline.
The survey also found that about 82 percent of respondents spent a minimum of 40 hours studying at school every week.
The foundation said about a quarter of the nation’s junior high school students — 220,000 pupils — studied at school on the weekend.
Meanwhile, the MOE resolved to ban junior high schools from using art or physical education classes for teaching of examination-related subjects such as English, math or Chinese literature.
Vice Minister of Education Wu Tsai-shun (吳財順) said school principals would have a poor year-end evaluation if their schools were found to have violated regulations.
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