The National Federation of Teachers’ Unions yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to reconsider plans to have schools conduct a survey of students on bullying that the federation says contains ambiguous language.
The Ministry of Education on July 21 revised its guidelines on the prevention of bullying on school campuses to change the definition of the term “campus bullying” from bullying between students to bullying by principals, teachers, staff members or students toward students, the federation said.
In accordance with the guidelines, the ministry has drafted a plan to promote the prevention of bullying on campuses, under which schools should conduct a “campus life questionnaire” in April and October of each year on students in junior and senior-high schools, and in the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school, the federation said.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
The survey in April would not be anonymous, while the one in October would be anonymous, the federation said.
In a copy of the proposed survey given to reporters by the federation, one of the questions is: “In the past six months, I have been humiliated loudly by my teacher in public, for example: being told that my bad performance embarrassed the school.”
Students are asked to respond “absolutely not,” “once to twice within half a year,” “two to three times a month,” “once a week” or “several times a week.”
Sometimes to allow students to hear them, teachers have to speak loudly, federation president Hou Chun-liang (侯俊良) said at a news conference in Taipei.
He said that humiliation is a “vague concept,” adding as an example that if a teacher says: “Some students have not handed in their homework. Please do so as soon as possible,” it is possible that some students might believe that the teacher is targeting or “humiliating” them.
Federation deputy secretary-general Lee Ya-ching (李雅菁) used as an example another question in the survey: “In the past six months, I have been prohibited by a teacher from [engaging in] necessary physiological behavior, such as not being allowed to eat breakfast, not being allowed to go to the bathroom or not being allowed to go to the infirmary.”
“Is going to the infirmary a necessary physiological behavior?” she asked, adding that not every instance of a student feeling unwell necessarily requires a visit to the infirmary.
Hou also questioned why the proposed survey only includes questions about bullying by other students or teachers.
“According to the Ministry of Education’s logic, they [principals and staff members] do not have this problem” of bullying students, he said.
There was “no need” to expand the definition of “campus bullying” to include principals, teachers and staff members, as there are laws to address bullying by those individuals, he said.
The line between bullying and discipline is sometimes “blurred,” he said, adding that people might have different interpretations.
He urged the ministry to revise the guidelines and reconsider undertaking the survey.
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