Writings about school punishments rouse Web community

A heated debate over school violence has arisen after two female alumnae of a Nanjing primary school began writing on popular social-networking websites about sad memories of their childhoods.

Zhang Zaoli, who now works at Northwestern University in the United States, published an article on the Chinese social-networking sites Renren and Douban on June 1, saying she had experienced the "darkest years of her life" while studying in Nanjing Lasalu Primary School in East China's Jiangsu province from 1997 to 1999.

The school, which is popular among parents, was accused in Zhang's article of putting too much academic pressure on pupils, subjecting children to violence and torture, and humiliating students in public.