China education: restraining order against ‘tiger dad’ who beat kids aged 5 and 7 and forced them to study university subjects
- Father berated and physically abused two small children in attempts to get them to study secondary and university level subjects
- The children’s mother sought court intervention and was granted a restraining order against the father to protect the children
A woman in China has sought a restraining order against her husband whom she alleged forces their children aged five and seven to attempt secondary and university level study by beating and verbally abusing them.
In a judgment released on WeChat on Tuesday, the People’s Intermediate Court of Nanjing, Jiangsu, eastern China, said it had issued a three-month restraining order for the woman, her seven-year-old son and five-year-old daughter and prohibited the father from threatening, beating or harassing them.
Tiger parenting as it is called in China involves strict parental supervision of a child’s activities and obsessive monitoring of their education and can often be excessive, however while disputes between parents over their children’s education are common in China, rarely do they appear before the courts.
It is common that mainland parents will let their children learn academic subjects in advance as they believe their children can gain advantages compared with their peers who don’t learn ahead of schedule.
03:22
Crackdown on private tutoring leaves industry, students and parents drawing a blank
The woman’s son is a primary school student while her daughter is still in kindergarten. But the woman, surnamed Zheng, said her husband, surnamed Mao, who holds a PhD degree, often teaches them secondary school and university subjects, such as wen yan wen, a literary language used in ancient China and taught to secondary students, and university-level mathematics, according to the court.