When 9-year-old Tiantian failed to buy a textbook, she was called up to the front of her class by a male teacher, slapped in the face, and then beaten on the backs of her hands with a wooden plank.
Tiantian (an assumed name) attended the Suzhou No. 11 Elementary School in Anhui Province, where she lives with her father Liu Chao. Her parents are divorced. Because of trauma from the March 1 incident, she has been transferred to a different school.
Mr. Wang, the teacher who hit Tiantian, has also been transferred to a different school, but Liu thinks he ought to be fired, China News Service reported.
The whole textbook collection cost about 100 yuan (about $15). Earlier, Tiantian (an assumed name) had informed her father that her teacher had told them to buy the book, but he did not trust her with the money.
“In the morning of March 1, I gave the money to another teacher and asked him to buy the book,” Liu Chao told China News Service, “but the book was sold out that day. I had no idea that my daughter would be beaten that afternoon.”
Tiantian told her father that when Mr. Wang asked who hadn’t purchased the textbook from the bookstore as he requested, she was the only one to raise her hand.
Liu Chao reported the matter to the police and to the local education bureau. He thinks that Mr. Wang was let off too lightly.
The exact nature of Wang’s punishment was not made known. “From what I know, Mr. Wang was transferred to a township school,” Liu said. “I can’t accept that.”
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