Corporal Punishment

Unlike most western countries corporal punishment is still legal in Taiwan. Or at least I think it is, because I see it everyday. In training I was told that there would be no hitting, ear pulling, or abusing the students, but on my first day of observation the English teacher was pinching the student's ear and dragging him up the front of the class, and the Chinese teacher's didn't even bat an eyelid.

Personally I still remember what it was like to be a kid so I can't bring myself to yell, or physically punish them (That's probably why they're all so crazy). My kindergarten homeroom teacher on the other hand does quite a lot of yelling, pushing, and the other day she was even hitting a kid.

 For my first week I watched in horror, thinking "OMG what are you doing to that small child!" but after once month my reaction changed to, "Well that is quite nasty, but it makes them behave well in class," which is really the important thing when you spend two hours a day in a classroom together. If a children is misbehaving I'll usually tell her about it, she'll make the child cry, and then they'll behave for the rest of the class. When she's out of the room I'll even use her as a threat to try and make the other children behave.

One of the children in my class was really testing me. I despise yelling at children so I make him stand up and put his hands in the air. I could feel my heart breaking, he looked so sad and miserable and I cracked and let him sit down after three minutes.

Another interesting scene I witnessed the other day was when my smallest student was taking too long to eat her cake for snack time. The Homeroom teacher then processed to start forcefully shoving it into her mouth, chanting eat! eat!. At the time I thought "Oh if this was Australia they would encourage the student not to eat cake, but here they are in Taiwan forcefully shoving it into the student's mouth."

I'm not sure what the conditions are in regular Taiwanese schools but I have a feeling that they are also quite strict. If you have 40 students in one class it takes a lot of effort to try and make them all behave. If you have that many students in one class you can't afford to let one or two get out of line.