Teacher forces 96 students to kneel for 20 minutes as punishment for being late

[yuiyoshida]

TOKYO —

A Tokyo school teacher made 96 high school students kneel for 20 minutes in the plaza outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building in May, officials said Saturday.

According to the board of education, the 35-year-old teacher said he was annoyed with the students who were late for a field trip and ordered them to kneel on the tiles for 20 minutes to discipline them, Fuji TV reported.

The teacher told the board he thought it was important that the students learn the importance of being on time.

The board said it will hold an inquiry to find out why nine other teachers who were present on the field trip did not intervene.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/teacher-forces-96-students-to-kneel-for-20-minutes-as-punishment-for-being-late

[davidpdx]

1. That is going to get some major complaints from parents

I know here in Korea laws were passed a number of years ago to stop any kind of corporal punishment. I've personally seen corporal punishment and outright abuse happen in the past here. When I worked in a hagwon (this was back in 2004), one of my coworkers was quizzing an elementary school student on some work and when the student didn't get the answer correct, the teacher would hit the student on the hand with a ruler. A few years later while working at an elementary school I saw a male teacher who was outright abusive toward a student. The student was being disruptive and I asked him to stand outside the room hoping he'd come back and behave. He got worse and the homeroom teacher came down and I can't remember why but he was rolling on the ground and the teacher acted like he was going to stomp on the student.

In both situations I didn't say anything. Foreign teachers here are treated differently from regular teachers so the amount of authority we have over situations like these is somewhere around zero.