Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
ChinaSmack recently reposted a video that has been showing up on Chinese netizen blogs the last few days, and I figured I would rerepost it here.
The video shows a Chinese kindergarten teacher repeatedly pushing, pulling, and hitting a little girl. The girl’s mother got the recording from the school and posted it online.
The story, according to ChinaSmack’s translation of the mother’s post, is this:
I am already almost at my wit’s end, but I just want to get some justice for my child!!
My daughter is only two and a half years old, and attends Xuzhou City children’s art school [nursery/kindergarten]. On the morning of September 1st, she had a quarrel with another child in her class over a small stool. Allegedly, my daughter scratched that child’s hand. That child’s mother just so happens to be a teacher at the nursery, and when she heard what happened, she rushed over to vent anger for her daughter. That child’s mother, Teacher Chen, then not only shoved but also hit my daughter for 10 minutes, and throughout all of this, all of the other teachers uniformly stood by and did nothing, not a single person going forth to intervene.
After my daughter was hit, the kindergarten teacher even called me and said that my daughter hit bit the other child, and wanted me to take the child that was bitten to go get a rabies vaccination!
After rushing to the school, I had a quarrel with that child’s mother, and only after I had requested during the quarrel to watch the video footage did I learn how my daughter was hit. I no longer want to remember that heartbreaking scene, but I forcefully copied the video recording from the kindergarten, am posting it here, hoping to ask everyone to help me, using legal channels to safeguard our personal rights!
I know this is something nobody wants to see, but here is the video:
It’s obviously vile and terrible. And it’s shocking to actually see it being done.
But I have to point out that although this is a worse-than-normal case, it is by no means uncommon. This type of treatment is very common. It’s usually not this intense, but it can be at times. I’ve witnessed it. And so have many other foreign teachers.
And as for the exposure this video is getting, I doubt much will come of it. Maybe, maybe the teacher will be fired. Besides that, this will just be ignored.
There are probably government officials who are just happy this wasn’t another kindergarten stabbing.
I Don’t Give A Figgity Figgity Figgity What?
The seventh Chinarchy audio post. This episode I talk about TEFL training and my first day of the new semester.
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Note: Just a heads up, at one point I drop the F-bomb about ten times. I also sing. Just letting you know in case you find that (the singing) offensive.
Beer Fest and Training
The sixth Chinarchy audio post. This episode I talk about going to the Qingdao beer festival and the week-long training I did for new English teachers in beijing.
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Update: I realized I mentioned “scantily clad Chinese girls” in my podcast and I failed to deliver any visual representations of those aforementioned subjects. So in the interest of good journalism, here are some photos from the festival:
Is it me, or is she a little bit cross-eyed? She looks like a Chinese Cheri Oteri.
Usher and Ethan
The fifth Chinarchy audio post. This episode I talk about going to an Usher concert, my awesome dancing skills, how my class environment has changed, dealing with a hitting problem, and the authoritarian vs. permissive parenting false dichotomy.
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Note: It’s forty-eight minutes long. Forty-eight minutes of baller. Don’t hate.
You Look Down But Far From Out
In the interest of keeping this brief: I lost.
Before I explain that further, I just wanted to thank everyone and anyone who listened to the initial podcast and offered me advice or support. It really, really meant a lot to me. Thank you.
Okay, so I did what I thought was most risky, but also had the greatest chance of getting Cathy fired. I called a parent behind the headmaster’s back.
I talked to one of the parents I trusted and told her about what happened. If the headmaster ever found out, I would be immediately fired. She would be extremely embarrassed — it would be a huge loss of face — and she’d feel completely betrayed. But I thought it was my best shot.
Anyway, the parent told me that her daughter, and other children, had complained about Cathy, and other parents knew she wasn’t a good teacher.
Until my phone call, they thought she was just a mean person. I explained that it was much worse than that: she is a violent, terrible person.
We talked for almost twenty minutes, and the parent was very sympathetic and understanding and sounded very concerned. But she didn’t want to call and demand that Cathy be fired. She told me she would pass along the info to the other parents (without my name) and maybe they would decide to do something. But, she said, probably the best thing to do was just wait and see what happened over the next few weeks.
Yeah. Part of me is hopeful that the rest of the parents will decide to take action. But most of me just feels frustrated and defeated. If I can’t even get foreigner parents to take a hard stance on this, what can I do? It’s depressing.
After we talked, the parent sent me an email saying that it might be better that Cathy didn’t get fired. Now she’ll be watched closer and won’t just transfer to another school and do the same things. It just sounded like she was trying to justify her inaction to herself. I didn’t bother replying.
So Cathy is back in the classroom. And the general climate in the school is pretty cold right now.
It’s not all bad. I heard from one assistant that not all of the other teachers are angry about what I did. Some of them know Cathy is terrible but felt like they couldn’t speak out against her. The pressure to protect other teachers is too strong. But they are glad that I did something.
Still, it’s not a victory. It’s a not-fully-crushing defeat. But I guess I’ll have to take it…
Cathy is still here. But so am I.
