Society

Students claim teacher burned them with iron

By He Dan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-18 09:18

Previously on China Daily Website:

7 kids burned in face for chatting in class

Beijing - A teacher at a private kindergarten in East China is the prime suspect after several children returned home after school with burn marks on their faces.

Cheng Sixia holds her son on Thursday. The boy's kindergarten teacher is suspected of burning his cheeks. [Wang Guozhu / for China Daily]

Police have taken the 30-year-old teacher into custody as they investigate the case.

Investigators believe the teacher, identified as Yi, used a mini-iron to punish children she thought were unruly.

Seven 6-year-olds from Banqiao kindergarten in Xinghua, Jiangsu province, were injured.

According to Friday's Yangtze Evening News, the teacher was stopped from continuing her attack on Tuesday by a passing colleague who grabbed the hot iron from Yi after hearing the children's loud cries.

At a press conference on Thursday night, the local government said Yi, a single woman, had intended to frighten the children into behaving by wielding the iron about the size of a computer mouse.

The local government spokesperson said the teacher believed the electric iron had cooled down.

The kindergarten president, surnamed Tong, told a local newspaper on Thursday that Yi had been taken away by police for questioning.

Parents said their injured children will be sent to Shanghai for further treatment and they said the kindergarten told them it will cover related medical costs.

Although corporal punishment is forbidden by law and is widely condemned by the public, it is thought to still go on in some primary education institutes in China.

In Tuesday's incident, the alarm was raised by Cheng Sixia who found both cheeks of her 6-year-old son had been burned.

She said the teacher claimed the children had pushed and shoved each other while heading to the toilet and said the boy had fallen.

The boy's mother did not get to the truth initially because the teacher had reportedly told the children to keep silent about the attack.

"The education authority will issue an alert to all kindergarten teachers in the city to prevent the recurrence of this kind of incident," said Zou Xianglong, director of the city's Education Bureau.

And, to curb cruelty at schools, parents and communities should be allowed to participate in and supervise the management of education institutes, said Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.