It is common for teachers to punish pupils with the aim of better educating them. But a recent incident in which a teacher forced a student to do press-ups on a moving bus raises the issue of how far teachers can go.
Most students are sleepless with excitement at the mere thought of going on a study trip. But what happened to one student recently left him feeling so violated that he wrote to Young Post to tell us about it. He had been messing around with his camera on the bus with his peers when the flash went off. One of the escorting teachers ordered him to hand over the camera. According to the student he did this, but the memory card was not in the camera at the time. The teacher demanded he hand over the card.
The student says he was reluctant to do that because the memory card, which was in his portable game console, contained private pictures which he didn't feel the teacher had any right to view. The teacher gave him 30 seconds to hand over the card, and for every extra second he used, he had to do a press-up as punishment.
It took the student 47 seconds to hand over the card. As a result he had to do 17 press-ups in the aisle of the moving bus.
Once the teacher had both items, he looked at the photos in front of the student and then took the camera back to his seat. It was returned two to three days later.
'I feel that I was walked all over and even sort of bullied,' the student said, adding he wasn't sure if the teacher was allowed by law to make those demands.
He wondered if he should have had the option of showing the teacher the pictures taken during the programme instead of surrendering the card; whether he had the right to refuse to hand over his personal property; whether the teacher's order to do press-ups on a bus was an acceptable punishment, and whether a teacher can view a student's memory card without his consent.