Taiwan teacher forced four pupils to eat chalk (Roundup)

Apr 9, 2007, 6:47 GMT

Taipei - A Taiwan primary-school teacher has been punished and ordered to receive psychiatric evaluation for forcing four pupils to eat chalk, the school said on Monday.

'We offer our deepest apology to the pupils' parents and the public. We have given the teacher one reprimand and have ordered her to undergo psychiatric evaluation,' Lai Chieh-hung, dean of the Wenlin Primary School in Taipei County, told reporters.

The incident occurred in early April when the teacher, identified as Huang, was teaching 'nature' class to fourth graders. Several pupils made noise when she was writing on the blackboard, so Huang turned around and shouted: 'If you continue talking, I will make you eat chalk!'

She pulled each pupil's head backward by pulling his or her hair, rubbed a chalk across the pupil's lips and teeth, and forced the pupil to swallow the chalk powder.

The other pupils were so scared that some began to cry.

'We are really worried because if she loses her temper again and if she happened to have a pencil or a glass bottle in her hand, she might push that into the pupil's mouth too,' another pupil's father said on TV.

Some of the pupils in Huang's class still have nightmares because of the chalk-eating incident, their parents said.

After the incident, Huang refused to apologize. 'She told us that she could buy each pupil a dozen toothbrushes to clean their teeth, but would never apologize,' Mrs Chien, a pupil's mother, said on TV.