A teacher who abuses a pupil: verbal violence and the offence of insult, punishable by up to three years

On 10 July judgment was given in the case of the man who beat up his teacher in the street 20 years after leaving school. The man, Chang, had been corporally punished by the teacher as a pupil and attacked him on meeting him by chance in 2018. He was convicted of provoking a disturbance and sentenced to one year and six months. The case has been widely discussed, readers arguing over whether the teacher or the pupil was at fault and agreeing on neither.

Before that discussion had died down, on 13 July a case was reported online of a 13-year-old girl, Tingting (a pseudonym), at the Shangdan Gaoxin School in Shangluo, Shaanxi, who had allegedly been bullied and abused by her form teacher, Wang.

According to a report by the City Hotline programme of Shaanxi Television, Tingting is in her first year of junior middle school and had transferred to the school only six months earlier. Soon after she transferred, her form teacher Wang began to abuse her frequently because her marks were poor, using a great deal of insulting language. After this had gone on for some time Tingting could bear it no longer and told her family, who did not believe it at first. She said she could prove it by recording, and between 14 June and 5 July she made more than 100 recordings totalling over 20 hours.

In the recordings Wang is repeatedly foul-mouthed and uses the word "worthless" again and again. One recording shows him inducing the class to join in humiliating her: Wang asks, "Who in this class is worthless? Who is worthless?" and a number of pupils shout out Tingting's name.

Source: Shaanxi Television, City Hotline

Tingting says that from morning reading to evening study, whenever Wang came into the classroom he would swear at her repeatedly and would not even let other pupils have contact with her. Her parents say that Tingting had been a lively child but had become silent since the beginning of the term. In a video interview she told the reporter that she was only a little weak academically, had done nothing wrong and had no quarrel with Wang, and could not understand why she should be treated this way. Being abused by the teacher every day, she said, made her want to die, to get away from that hellish place, and not to stay there another minute or second.

Source: Shaanxi Television, City Hotline

The Shangluo Municipal Education Bureau said it had required the Shangzhou District Education Bureau to set up an investigation team, that the district discipline inspection commission had also become involved, and that the matter would be investigated swiftly and dealt with strictly and promptly, with the findings published in good time. On the morning of 14 July the Shangzhou District People's Government issued a statement that the investigation team had established at a preliminary stage that Wang had indeed abused the pupil and that the matter would be investigated thoroughly to the end. There was further development that evening: Wang's teaching qualification was revoked.

The legal liability of a teacher who abuses a pupil

The Teachers Law of the People's Republic of China provides as follows.

Article 37: a teacher who falls within any of the following circumstances shall be given an administrative sanction or dismissed by the school, other educational institution or education administration department concerned: (1) deliberately failing to complete the task of education and teaching, causing loss to education and teaching work; (2) administering corporal punishment to pupils and not correcting the practice after education; (3) having poor conduct and insulting pupils, with egregious effects. Where a teacher falls within item (2) or (3) of the preceding paragraph and the circumstances are serious, constituting a crime, criminal liability is pursued in accordance with law.

The Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors provides as follows.

Article 21: teaching and other staff of schools, kindergartens and nurseries shall respect the personal dignity of minors and shall not administer corporal punishment or disguised corporal punishment to minors or commit any other act that insults their personal dignity.

It is clear that the form teacher's long-continued abuse of the pupil breached Article 21 of the Law on the Protection of Minors, and that inducing other pupils to isolate and humiliate Tingting was naked school violence. Where a teacher abuses a pupil and the circumstances are serious, the pupil may, through a guardian, assert his or her rights in accordance with law.

An act of insulting another may be treated as a crime where the circumstances are serious. Under Article 42 of the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security, a person who publicly insults another or fabricates facts to defame another is detained for not more than five days or fined not more than RMB 500; where the circumstances are relatively serious, the person is detained for not less than five and not more than ten days and may in addition be fined not more than RMB 500.

Article 246 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, headed "insult", provides that a person who publicly insults another by violence or other means, or fabricates facts to defame another, where the circumstances are serious, is sentenced to criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights, or to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years. An offence under the preceding paragraph is prosecuted only on complaint, except where it seriously harms the public order or the interests of the State.

In a case of this kind, where a teacher at a school uses verbal violence to insult a pupil's dignity and infringes the lawful rights of a minor, the legal liability may be divided roughly into three levels according to the circumstances.

First, where the circumstances are minor or relatively minor, the school, other educational institution or education administration department concerned imposes an administrative sanction or dismisses the teacher.

Second, where the circumstances are relatively serious, administrative detention may be imposed.

Third, where the circumstances are serious, the maximum is fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years.

Source: Shaanxi Television, City Hotline

A warning to the education sector

Both the case of the man who beat his teacher in the street 20 years on and the case of Tingting recording the abuse give much food for thought, and both sound a warning for the education sector. As the Shangzhou District People's Government said, this was an incident that seriously breached teachers' ethics and professional conduct. Conduct of that kind is never shielded, indulged or tolerated.

Teaching and educating is a teacher's duty. A good teacher can not only cultivate fine moral qualities in a child but also, by precept and example, shape pupils' ideals, interests, feelings and will. A teacher whose ethics and conduct fall short of the standard will not only drain pupils of their enthusiasm for study and their confidence as people but will breed sullen resistance, and in more serious cases leave a child contemplating suicide.

The education sector should reflect on this affair. Every school should take warning from it, strengthen its assessment of teachers' ethics and conduct, investigate strictly for any lapse, and carry out self-examination and rectification.

A school should be the cradle in which pupils grow and learn, an extension of the home, and not a cold forbidden place, still less a civilised prison from which one longs to escape. It is to be hoped that the education sector will see no more such bad apples.