More than 80 percent of schools breach Ministry of Education regulations and do not allow students to wear winter clothing, a group of youth organizations said on Thursday, calling on the ministry to enforce its rules.
A survey of 1,438 students at 853 schools found that 84.3 percent of schools are ignoring ministry regulations that allow students to wear winter clothing inside or outside their uniform during cold weather, the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy said.
The regulations also state that the definition of “cold weather” should be determined by the student rather than the school, the association said.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
However, students reported being punished or issued a warning if they wore a hat, gloves, jacket or scarf without obtaining permission in advance, it said.
About 54 percent of schools still maintain an outright ban on students wearing warm clothing on top of their uniform, while others stipulate a certain temperature under which students can wear winter clothing, it added.
Some schools restrict certain types of clothing without advance permission, such as scarves, hats or sweatshirts, and even particular colors, the association said.
Punishments ranged from a warning to doing push-ups, cleaning or running errands, the survey showed.
Association deputy director Ho Wei-tzu (何蔚慈) said that the survey responses show that the practice has continued for a long time and students feel powerless to stop it.
Student associations that have attempted to impose the ministry’s regulations through proper channels have been pressured or threatened by administrators, Ho said.
It is ironic that so many schools require their students to follow their rules, but are not themselves following the ministry’s rules, he said.
The ministry’s K-12 Education Administration should investigate whether schools are following the regulations and not leave it up to students to fight for their rights, he added.
The K-12 Education Administration yesterday said that it had reissued documents to local education departments demanding that they remind schools to comply with the ministry’s regulations.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods