Spare the rod, and welcome to the 21st century!

Just when you thought it was safe to be a kid...

A colleague of mine had a rather nasty incident in class yesterday morning. One of his students - the class troublemaker - stabbed another with a pen. He drew blood and everything, apparently. The victim, who is one of the more well behaved kids in that class, simply went up and told the teacher calmly what had happened.

My buddy handled it quite well, I thought. He took the troublemaker out into the hall and calmly but firmly reprimanded him, complete with a well-deserved threat to call his parents. I happened to see this because I was in the hall giving an oral test to one of my own students.

Later on, I learned the rest of the story.

After he was done with his lecture, my friend turned the matter over to his class' homeroom teacher (HRT in company lingo). The HRTs are native Chinese speakers and thus much more easily able to communicate with the kids when push comes to shove. For that reason, they are usually involved in meting out discipline. As was the case here. The HRT took the offending student downstairs to the office, and they both returned shortly afterward.

"How'd it go?" my friend asked her.

"Fine," she said. "He won't do that again."

"What'd you do?"

"I took the ink thingy out of a pen like he used, and I stabbed him."

I knew this sort of thing was still somewhat acceptable in Taiwan, but I must say it was still a shock to actually have it happen in my school. I don't really know what to make of it, except to say this: we, the English teachers, aren't allowed to hit the students. I like it that way - in fact, I wouldn't have come to work for this company if that hadn't been the case. But the fact that others are allowed to do such things doesn't sit well at all with me. Ouch.