Boy brutally beaten at education camp
- Source: Global Times
- [01:29 August 19 2009]
- Comments
Some parents like the camp
The methods used in camps to cure troubled or Internet-addicted children are hotly debated, especially after incidents of physical abuse.
On August 3, Deng Senshan, a 16-year-old boy in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was beaten to death by camp supervisors after he was enrolled to cure his Internet addiction.
The controversy is heightened because Chinese parents send their children to camps to endure military-like training.
“There is nothing wrong with the training at Tang’s camp. My son was beaten even more severely than Pu. But that’s effective,” a parent surnamed Wu told the Global Times.
“My son is now a useful child. Previously he performed badly at school and scored only 7 points (out of 100) in math and 23 in Chinese language, but now he can get 70 and 80,
respectively,” he said.
“The kids are actually on good terms with Tang. Some students even kneel down in front of Tang to thank him after being reformed,” he said.
Wu Chaofu, a 15-year-old dropout, who was sent to the camp in June 2007 by Wu, was allegedly reformed and returned to school after training at the camp.
He is now working part-time at a restaurant during the summer vacation to earn his tuition fees, Wu said.
Education experts also hold mixed views on the camps.
“Beating children is illegal, no matter the intention. Offenders should be held liable,” Geng Shen, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, told the Global Times.
“Special methods should be applied to troubled children, but physical punishment can’t work,” he said.
The ancient “iron-ruler education” method, where children were beaten with an iron ruler, is no longer feasible because it is too easy to cross the line between punishment and abuse, he said.
But Geng said such camps will not be closed by the authorities because there is a huge social demand for them.
“They are an effective complement to traditional education at regular schools,” he said. “But they need to regulate teachers’ behavior so Pu’s tragedy won’t be repeated in the future.”
