VietNamNet Bridge – The two ways of educating children with corporal punishment in Hai Phong City and Soc Trang province have made people indignant.

Corporal punishments will help?

A thin boy at the age of 10, naked in the cold, was seen being tied to an electricity poll on the way crossing the Xuan Uc hamlet of Thuan Thien commune in Hai Phong City.

Though the boy was crying bitterly in the temperature of 15oC, he did not get any help. The people, who bypassed the way, only glanced at him for a while and then continued their way.

The boy was only released when the officers of the traffic inspectors’ team No. 3 found him. At that time, a man running from a house nearby appeared and untied the boy.

The traffic inspectors advised the man not to apply corporal punishments when educating children, asking the man to allow the boy enter the home and put on clothes.

The man, who introduced himself as the father of the boy, said he stripped the boy naked to deter him. “I tried to frighten him and make him feel ashamed, so that he does not continue spending time on playing games,” he explained.

Pham Minh Chau, the Head of the inspectors’ team said he found the boy in black and blue, and he could not understand why a father could torture his son in such a cold.

The Chief of the Thuan Thien commune’s Police Station Nguyen Van Sinh said the father is Vu Van Hieu, 54, while the boy was his youngest son Vu Van D, 13, a 7th grader of the Thuan Thien Secondary School.

Students drop out because they’re afraid of teacher

A lot of students of 9A2 class of Trung Binh Secondary School in Soc Trang province decided not to come back to school after Tet, because they feared they would be beaten by teacher Ho Thi Huynh Nhu.

Some others dropped out before Tet already, for the same reason. 32 out of the 33 students of the class were hit by the teacher. The luckiest students got two lashes, while some received more than 100 lashes. The rod the teacher used to “educate” the students was a wooden bar, about 0.5 meters in length.

The teacher set up the rule that all students who make mistakes must be punished. She also decides how many lashes students need to receive. The students who are late to school, stand off the line, don’t fulfill homework will receive 2-10 lashes for every mistake.

However, the teacher decides that students only bear the punishment at the end of every week. The punishment would be executed by the teacher, and she would ask another do this for her, if she wants.

T, a student, for example, once received 70 lashes at the same time, including 68 lashes from the teacher and the other two from the monitor. After that, T decided not to go to school any more.

The school’s headmaster Quach Thanh Huy said Nhu has admitted her wrong behavior and promised not to repeat the same mistake. However, her behavior has raised high wave of indignation from parents, who want to punish her more heavily.

A parent said she does not send her child to school to receive such heavy corporal punishments from the teacher.

Tien Phong