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Ugly Incident: Hunan Students and Chinese Military In Violent High School Clash

Posted: 08/26/2014 11:00 am

It’s an annual tradition in Chinese schools, just as regular as the famed gaokao: military training.

Every year, military personnel teach the public and university students the finer points of what exactly they do. The training is supposed to instill a sense of pride and discipline in the students as well as to have them better appreciate the military. However, this coming together of two very different cultures – civilian and military – doesn’t always happen smoothly.

A military training exercise at a Hunan school resulted in a violent clash between a combination of students and faculty against the officers sent to instruct them, resulting in 42 injuries, Beijing News reported on August 25.

The incident happened on August 24 at Huangcang Middle School in Hunan Province during the freshmen’s training sessions. Images posted online showed medical staff tending to injured students in military uniforms. One photo showed a student flanked by several of his peers, his hand covered in blood.

During the training, a male student was unhappy about the way an officer joked with a female student, and allegedly told the officer off. He was then assigned to do push-ups as punishment. Furthermore, reports said the angry officer stomped, kicked and beat a student.

The incident took a dramatic turn for the worse when a commanding officer began beating some of his male students, infuriated that a group of students had “humiliated” an officer, the report said.

The students’ teacher, Liu Yunjie, tried dialing 120 (emergency services) for medical help, which also drew the officers’ wrath.

As one student recalled: “Some of the male students were bleeding, and teacher Liu grabbed a cellphone and tried to call 120. The military officer leading Class 22 asked him to drop the cellphone. The officer even asked his fellow officers if they should beat the teacher. One man responded ‘Yes,’ and a crowd charged towards the teacher.”

Liu was among the most severely injured victims.

Seeing officers beat the teacher triggered angry reactions from the students, who fought back. Some of the students suffered contusions and fractured bones, according to the report.

Military training for Chinese students often includes military drills, marching and harsh physical training, all of which is meant to instill a sense of national defense, collectivism, perseverance and organization.

The incident is being investigated by the local education bureau and the police.

Photos: Sina Weibo

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Thief Ransacks 80 Classrooms, Leaves Snarky Note Behind for Students

Posted: 07/9/2014 11:08 am
bad teacher

Cameron Diaz stars in Columbia Pictures’ comedy “Bad Teacher.”

Normally we assume when a thief finishes stealing something, he or she would hurry away from the scene of the crime. However, that wasn’t the case for a 22 year-old man who left a snarky note on a blackboard after ransacking school property, asking students not to believe things taught by teachers.

According to a report by Southern Capital, a man surnamed Li from southwestern Sichuan Province stole cash, ID cards, hundreds of euros and other property worth of thousands of yuan from about 80 classrooms from three different high schools last year.

We don’t know if miserable school memories prompted him to leave a note on one of the classroom’s blackboards, but he obviously took his time to write, “All that is taught by teachers is wrong. Self-study is the key.”

Most of the classrooms were not locked and students’ valuable items were loosely put on their desks, which made the schools easy targets, the report said. The thief was finally arrested in Nanjing after being caught on security camera.

He’s been sentenced to four years and three months in jail by a district court in Guangzhou.

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Teacher Slaps Guangdong Kid in Math Class, Killing Him

Posted: 06/25/2014 7:22 pm

A 13 year-old student in Zhanjiang, Guangdong is dead after having being struck by his teacher during math class, reported Southern Metropolis Report.

Huang, a fourth-year elementary school student, was attending math class on the morning of June 23 at the Jijia Central County Elementary School in the village of Lingwei. According to Huang Jizhang, a cadre committee member for North Lingwei Village, students in the class said Huang was causing a disturbance with a fellow student.

Mr Chen, the teacher of the math class, became very angry with Huang and struck the back of his head. Students say they saw blood coming out from Huang’s mouth, and he suddenly fell to the ground, unconscious.

Huang was taken to the Jijia County Health Center for emergency treatment. However, Huang was pronounced dead by the time relatives arrived. The parents, in disbelief, sent Huang to another hospital to get a second opinion, but the new doctors reached the same conclusion.

Chen Ze, the principal of the Jijia Central County Elementary School, confirms Chen has been taken into police custody for questioning.

The report does not specifically state the cause of death.

Photo: Omsi

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Shenzhen teacher pleads guilty to child molestation

Posted: 09/24/2013 11:09 am

A former head teacher in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District pleaded guilty earlier this week to the sexual molestation of four female students at Hongji School, according to a report by Shenzhen Daily.

Prosecutors have requested that the head teacher, surnamed Wu, 42, be jailed for three to five years for sexually assaulting the girls “dozens of times,” though some of the parents feel such a prison term would be too light in view of Wu’s crimes, and the psychological harm it has done to the girls.

According to the court case, Wu had been molesting the female students during noon nap time since September 2012, but his crimes were only exposed in May when one of the girl’s parents went to police. He had persuaded the girls over the course of several months that what he was doing was OK because he was a teacher and “different from other people.”

Stories of child sexual abuse by teachers have been making headlines in local and national media on a regular basis in recent months, and some teachers found guilty of rape of minors have even been executed this year under China’s criminal law.

Li Feng, who was executed July, was one such example of an elementary school teacher that the state came down hard on in an example to others. Li was found guilty of raping and molesting 19 students under the age of 14 in Jilin Province.

China’s Central Government this year introduced tougher sentences for those found guilty of abusing children in an attempt to better protect the safety and rights of minors.

Photo credit: ShardsOfChina

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Teacher suicide in Guangdong sheds light again on workplace stress

Posted: 03/18/2013 4:00 pm

A sad story has emerged out of the Guangdong city of Zhanjiang that puts the spotlight once again on stress and mental health.

On March 2, a 32-year-old male teacher in Leizhou, Zhanjiang committed suicide in his dormitory. His family suspects his death was caused by an excessive amount of workplace pressure. His school principal told to the media that many people are struggling under high pressure these days, adding the teacher also suffered from depression and was an introvert, according to media reports.

This teacher, who was not named in media reports, was a senior high math teacher in Leizhou Number 1 Middle School. He graduated from Hubei and took part in an open recruitment in Leizhou before being hired in 2005.

He was found with a wire around his neck and his body dangling from the iron railing in his dorm. A note said “I would rather die than get anyone else involved.” The police have ruled the death a suicide.

Journalists visited the teacher’s family and learned from his younger brother that he got divorced last May. The teacher apparently had also complained to his family about the working pressure and low pay in Leizhou.

The school responded to media enquiries by saying everyone in society is under pressure, which is what is needed to excel.

There’s no doubt that as China modernizes and pressure increases, suicide has become the way out for some. One expects more such cases before the spotlight is truly turned to the importance of mental health.

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Teacher in Dongguan slaps misbehaving first-grader four times, knocking out two teeth

Posted: 03/3/2013 12:55 pm

The bad behaviour of a first-grader was too much for one teacher in Dongguan, who proceeded to smack him, sending him to the hospital with two fewer teeth than he started his day with.

Here’s how the incident went down.  The student, only identified by his surname Li, from Daojiao Century School, was doing what children do in the classroom sometimes – he was messing about with his friends.

The teacher asked him to pay attention, but the boy ignored the instructions.  This incurred the teacher’s further wrath, so the boy was called to the front of the classroom where she slapped him four times.

On seeing blood, the teacher is said to have contacted the boy’s mother immediately, but she lied about what happened to protect herself. She claimed she accidently hit the student while measuring up his uniform.

It was only later that the boy revealed what actually happened.

Shanghai Daily reports:

The school principal said while the boy did misbehave, the school does not condone such punishment by its teachers.

The teacher has been reprimanded and has had her monthly bonus taken away.

The principal said the school would transfer the boy to another class and discuss compensation with his parents.  The boy ended up having his two front teeth removed in the hospital.

This is by no means the worst case of child abuse. One teacher was jailed for six-and-a-half years for dropping a child on their head as punishment.

Here’s a reminder of how bad that incident was:

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12 year old in Guangzhou kills himself after being scolded by teacher

Posted: 11/22/2012 7:00 am

A 12 year-old jumped to his death at his apartment building in Guangzhou’s Huadu District Nov. 20 after being scolded by his teacher for failing to complete his homework, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

At around 7:15 am, Xiao Liang left his home to set off for school, having given no sign that his mood was any different than usual. After Xiao Liang jumped out of the window on the 16th floor of the building where he lived, the security guard found his body and immediately called 120.

His younger brothers, twins who were two years younger than him, approached the spot from which he had jumped. They saw his bag on the floor and next to it was his exercise book lying open at a page where Xiao Liang had written: “I am off to die. Bye bye.”

Paramedics pronounced the boy dead at the scene and police ruled out the possibility of murder.

The boy’s mother had received a call from his teacher the day before saying he had not completed his homework. She told her son he must do better in the future. The mother told media that her son was a clever but lazy student who would skip a task he found too difficult. She said she herself was not very educated and could not help her 12 year-old son with his homework.

Xiao Liang’s family said he had shown no sign of being unhappy but his mother admitted that because she and her husband worked such long hours, the children were mostly reared by their grandmother.

Reporters from the paper went to the boy’s school, Fenghuang Bilingual School on Longzhu Road, but at the time the newspaper went to print, no teacher had commented on the death. Xiao Liang’s classmates said they had not noticed anything strange about his behaviour the day before.

Lots of people had an explanation as to how this tragedy was made possible. The head of the Baiyun District Early Learning Centre, Mr. Yang, urged parents and teachers to demand the best from children but not forget that children’s self-esteem is important and must not be damaged.

An expert from the Guangdong Education Research Centre told the paper that, like the recent marathon death, this was a sign that Chinese society was placing too much emphasis on grades at the expense of overall development.

It also emerged that, on the day he died, test scores were released that showed that Xiao Liang scored 95 in a recent quiz. The class average was 88.5.

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Shenzhen Party Secretary praises teachers, but people are skeptical

Posted: 09/12/2012 7:00 am

Shenzhen’s senior-most government official, Wang Rong, called to make teaching the most envied job in the city ahead of Teacher’s Day which fell September 10, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

In remarks made at an awards ceremony to recognise outstanding teachers, Wang said that measures should be made to encourage respect for teachers and make it a more satisfying job. These would include salary increases to keep more in the profession.

Wang Rong

Awards given out at the ceremony included “Model Teacher,” “10 Outstanding Principals,” and “10 Outstanding Young Teachers.” The head teacher of Luohu Foreign Languages School Yuan Liang was among the winners.

Wang said that as Shenzhen leads the way in China’s transition from an economy built on cheap manufacturing to a knowledge economy, teachers would be at the forefront of this effort.

One teacher named Zhang Hong complained of low pay, brutal hours, and pressure from parents, adding that being expected to be at the forefront of social change simply meant more pressure.

A middle school teacher surnamed Tian complained that in addition to the pressure of getting students through exams, the pressure of being responsible for the safety of all students in her class was enormous.

It was announced that every teacher who stayed in the profession for over a year would receive a salary increase of 100 yuan and every teacher who stayed for three years would receive an increase of 300 yuan.

However, Zhang Hong has been in the profession for over 10 years and her salary is only 3300 yuan.

A 2007 study showed that job satisfaction is low among teachers in Shenzhen and little appears to have improved since.

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An 18-year old student in Shenzhen is raped by her teacher after night at KTV

Posted: 08/16/2012 1:00 pm

A high school student has told the Southern Metropolis Daily that she was raped by her teacher after being coerced into getting drunk at his birthday party three months ago.

Xiao Yu, 18, is a student at Shenzhen Global Digital Training School. On May 10, she and five classmates were invited by their teacher, Mr. Wei, to have dinner and go to KTV to celebrate his birthday.

While eating dinner and singing in the KTV room, the teacher encouraged his students to drink large amounts of beer and imported wine. Xiao Yu lost consciousness and was taken back to the teacher’s dormitory, where she was raped. The next morning Xiao Yu woke up naked next to her teacher, and according to Xiao, was raped again.

According to the report, most students in Wei’s class admire him and say he is a “model teacher”. Wei has been arrested but has told police that Xiao Yu, originally from Jiangxi Province, is his girlfriend. Therefore, he claims, he is not a rapist.

 

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