China Photo Triggers International Outcry

This picture is reportedly what passes for classroom instruction in China. A kindergarten teacher in China gave a female student the experience of being lifted by the ears. Not only does the teacher appear to be enjoying the experience, but she later posted the photo to Weibo, the Chinese analogue of Twitter.

The teacher later said that this was not punishment and that she and the students “were just having fun.” She allegedly let another student take photos of the incident with a cell phone.

The teacher was recently hired under a “first hire, then certify” policy to fill badly needed teacher positions.

The photo triggered outcry in the wake of another video from Shanxi province in which a teacher is shown slapping a student.

The teacher was given a 15 day suspension for beating the student.

I recall on one of my trips to China in having dinner with one of the wealthiest Chinese businessmen who told me that he sent his daughter to Canada to be educated. When I asked why, he explained that he would not expose his child to the cruelty of the Chinese schools — a system in which he obviously excelled but found physically and emotionally crushing.

19 thoughts on “China Photo Triggers International Outcry”

  1. I think that the chinese teachers should have the same treatment as they gave the kids, let’s see how much they like it. Jerks. And don’t get me started on nuns.

  2. Oh, Dredd! You HAD to bring Zappa into it:

    Watch out where those HUSKIES go
    And don’t you EAT that YELlow snow!

    Judging from what I’ve seen cops doing to people in this country to people who aren’t doing anything and don’t deserve it, and who are disabled or in the throes of an epilectic attack, I would say

    That they are teaching kids what is going to happen to them their whole lives, by getting them used to it early.

    My guess would be that most of the teachers are doing stuff like this. I could be wrong, just a guess.

    My grade school was Lutheran, not Catholic. We had ONE teacher who dragged students around by the ears. Nobody else acted like that at all. But this one was a really nasty old bat; I of course was one that got dragged around quite a bit (unlike my sister, the little shy wallflower, who was NEVER dragged around)! My father came close to pulling me out of the school because of it, but I stuck it out a little while longer.

    Malisha, you should have smacked the hell out of her and run. The cop would still have been playing pinball; he wouldn’t have cared!!!! And it would sure have made YOU feel better!!!!

  3. I might suggest cleaning up our own house and criticize others who harm children elsewhere. Why should children in foreign countries not have advocates here in the US because we have some problems here.

    I would venture to say a child or anyone else for that matter who gets brutalized really does not care who helps as long as someone does help.

  4. Oh, the Catholic nuns were experts at this ear pulling thing and I’m talking only 40 years ago. I have taught both naughty and well-behaved children for over 25 years and while I’m pretty strict, I never once felt close to hitting or hurting a child. It is so counterproductive. Paddling in Texas, Alabama and Arkansas? I’m sure it’s because of what’s in the Bible, not that I ever read it. Just seems that people in Bible belt states have a knack for treating others disrespectfully. The larger the cross around their necks the more worried I get. I take it that if you wear one publicly you immediately protect yourself from criticism.

  5. @Dredd I’m with you, I think we need to clean up our house before we start criticizing others.

    I’m old enough to remember the Kent State killings, college students shot down, with NO punishment for soldiers that killed them.
    That’s never brought up when we criticize other countries, but then neither are the people that were bayoneted in New Mexico colleges.

  6. Condemnations of any other nation by the U.S.eh? is exceptionalist jerking off in public:

    According to estimates from the federal Department of Education (Office of Civil Rights), there were about 223,000 paddlings of students in the 2005-06 school year — down from 457,754 only ten years previously. This shows that the rapid decline of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which had leveled off by the middle of the 1990s, had resumed. Total paddlings were equivalent to only 0.5% of the total US school population.

    In percentage terms the heaviest-paddling states in 2005-06 were still Mississippi (7.5 per cent of students paddled during the year) followed by Arkansas (4.7%). Alabama comes third with 4.5% — also in slow decline, despite that state’s 1995 explicit legislative encouragement to teachers to use the paddle.

    In absolute terms, however, Texas, with its much greater population, is the “world capital of paddling”: 49,197 punishments recorded, but this is down from 118,701 only ten years previously, a remarkably sharp drop, completely discrediting various anecdotal suggestions that many Texas school districts had become more enthusiastic about spanking in recent years, rather than less. This figure amounts to only 1.1% of Texas students paddled during the year but, simply because Texas is so big, it represents about one-fifth of total US CP. At the other extreme, the number of officially recorded paddlings in Idaho was 111, in Kansas 50, in Colorado 8, and in Wyoming zero.

    According to one report, paddlings in Mississippi actually increased between 2006-07 and 2008-09, from 47,727 to 57,953, a very remarkable bucking of the trend if it is true. These statistics are cited to the state’s Department of Education and do not seem to tally with those collected by the federal authorities, which quote lower numbers.

    (Jerkus Maximus). If ya gotta jerk off doods and doodettes then do it in private for heaven sake.

  7. Anonymously Yours 1, October 25, 2012 at 8:27 am

    Dredd…. Role models….yes we are…..we can do it and you can too…..
    ======================================
    Dispair not, we have the solution …

  8. ABOUT 15 years ago I was in a bus station waiting for my bus and I saw an elderly woman abusing a child. Smack Smack while she was screaming at him, “Stop Crying!” I ran to get the police who were always in the station. Cop was playing pinball, refused to intervene. I began to yell at the woman and nobody joined me; I had to get on my bus so I asked the bus driver to wait and he refused. We didn’t have cell phones then so no 911. The bus took off. I sat there infuriated at the driver, the cop, the old b*tch, myself. Then it hit me: I should have hauled off and smacked the old woman right in the face and then run to get on my bus! The cop would have been there within the minute. Next time I see something like that, oh YEAH!

    But I remember when I was little. There wasn’t “corporal punishment” in the schools I attended (public) but kids told me their teachers at parochial schools beat them up. One kid was hung up by his thumbs! The parents knew about this and permitted it!

    No wonder there are so many angry, resentful, thoughtless, unevolved people running around supporting every kind of bad behavior and spouting every kind of hatred and calumny. Look what they were taught: bullying.

  9. Ear-pulling was used by nuns in Roman-Catholic elementary schools, in the 50s. My 6th-grade teacher would pull the kid’s ear forward, until the pain made his head go forward. Then, she’d reverse the direction of pull. Quite efficient.
    But I digress. The teachers in the video and photo need confinement and treatment. And an enforced court order to stay away from children, like any other child molesters.

  10. raff, Good job intervening. Those who abuse their children should get the message that it’s unacceptable behavior.

  11. The teacher may have been having by by the ear lifting but the student didn’t think much of it.

    The slapping teaching hit, repeatedly, at least 4-5 different students.

    Both of these teachers should find other employment.

  12. I wonder what is more disturbing: The teacher lifting the child by the ears or saying lifting the child by the ears was fun.

    Again, another example of a society being measured by how it treats its most vulnerable.

    Hopefully there will be a generation of folks there who will not subscribe to the belief “Well, I was thrashed around by my parents/teachers/shamens and so should you Little Johnny.

  13. I taught English in South Korea during the early 2000s. Ear twisting (think of a key in a lock) was a common form of “corporal punishment” (read: abuse). It still went on despite being made illegal both in private and public schools.

    I and other teachers rarely had problems with kids and discipline…then again, the kids may have been more cooperative because they knew westerners wouldn’t lay a finger on them.

  14. I kniow nothing about the system, whetgher this is endemic or an instance of the not common beoing posted because it is the uncommon (I sure as heck that is the case) With the man punching his child I have twice intervened Once when I saw a woman hitting her child and another time when I saw a woman picking up her little girl, about 2 or so I guess, and shaking her like a ragdoll. Thankfully it is not all women who do this, as I have to assume it is not all chinese who treat their children in the ways described here.

  15. I can remember being on a commuter train at night while returning from law school and a chinese man struck his 2 or 3 year old child so hard it sent him flying from one seat to the seat facing his parent. I jumped up and had to be restrained. This wasn’t a slap or a spanking, it was a hard hit with his fist. Disgusting then and now in the picture above.

  16. Dredd…. Role models….yes we are…..we can do it and you can too…..

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