Society

7 kids burned in face for chatting in class

By Zhang Jiawei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-12-17 17:04

A 30-year-old teacher burned seven kids in the face using an iron because they didn't listen to her and chatted during class at a kindergarten in Xinghua city of East China's Jiangsu province on Dec 14.

Cheng Sixia, mother of one of the victims, Cui, shows her son's scar. [Photo/Yangtse Evening Post]

The Yangtse Evening Post reported that the teacher, a single woman surnamed Yi, would have hurt more children if she were not stopped by another teacher who were passing by the classroom and heard the children's cries.

Yi also threatened the children not to tell their parents and made up the excuse that the kids' scars were caused by "falling down in the toilet."

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"What happened?" asked Cheng Sixia, mother of one of the victims, Cui, as she was shocked at seeing the big scar on her 6-year-old son's face when she picked him up after school.

Yi told her that the floor in the kindergarten's toilet was slippery and her son fell down when the kids were crowding into it.

Cheng was suspicious about Yi's explanation because she found wounds not only on her son's face, but also behind his ear, which obviously cannot be caused by a fall.

The mother asked a classmate of her son who came over to do homework with Cui if he knew what happened to her son. The boy at first refused to tell her because the teacher asked them "not to tell," but finally said Cui was burned by the teacher with "the thing used to iron clothes."

The city government said Thursday at a press conference that the kindergarten was privately owned and Yi, who wanted to scare the kids, thought the iron, used for ironing shoe-pads, was not hot after she pulled the plug out.

The kindergarten's manager, surnamed Tong, said Yi and the iron have been taken away by the police and "the iron doesn't belong to them."

The seven victims will receive medical treatments in Shanghai at the kindergarten's expense.