The central authorities have recently urged education departments and schools to protect teachers' disciplinary power and support them in disciplining students when necessary.

It is an old problem that teachers "dare not, are unwilling to, or do not know how to" discipline students that engage in bad behavior or violate school rules, fearing their parents will complain.

Many schools do not bother to conduct an investigation into the validity of any parental complaints. Some local education departments and schools include parent complaints in teachers' evaluations. Only those having a clean record in this regard, irrespective of whether the reports are valid or not, qualify to be evaluated as model teachers. That means as long as a parent makes a report to school complaining of a teacher's "misconduct", the evaluation of the latter's performance by his or her employer will be affected.

No wonder more and more teachers would rather "do less than more" and thus turn a blind eye to students' violations of discipline and rules on campus.

Also, some we-media outlets hype up some extreme cases of students being physically assaulted or humiliated by teachers prompting the public to adopt a zero-tolerance perspective on teachers exercising disciplinary power. This often throws the school and the teacher into a whirlpool of public opinion. So the schools also discourage teachers from exercising disciplinary power.

Yet, to maintain the normal educational and teaching order of school, the teachers' legitimate disciplinary power must be strictly protected. To disencumber teachers from the concerns of false accusations from parents, the schools should verify the parents' complaints against teachers are justified. The schools are obliged to help teachers defend themselves for the normal exercising of disciplinary power. The teacher evaluation system should also be reformed so that teachers are not deterred from disciplining students when necessary.

-BEIJING NEWS