A secondary school in China has suspended a member of staff after he verbally abused students while they queued up for lunch at the canteen.
The staff member, surnamed Chen, recorded a video of himself and telling the students they were “being fed, but not taught”.
Then he said students who were talking “should be given some beatings”.
The video was posted online by a parent on December 26, the same day Chen recorded it. It is unclear how the parent got their hands on the video, according to a report by the mainland media outlet Baixing Guanzhu.
The following day, the school in Yunnan province in southwestern China said Chen was not a teacher but “logistics personnel” and had been given demerit and suspended.
Mainland social media reacted angrily to the teacher’s outburst.
“These students are so poor living in such an emotionally depressing environment like this,” said one person on Weibo.
Another added: “Even prisoners have better living conditions.”
“He was insulting himself more than the students. The teachers should be the ones teaching them,” said a third.
It is not the first time school staff have found themselves in trouble in China.
In 2021, footage of a secondary school teacher who harshly scolded her students went viral after students posted them online.
The teacher, surnamed Xiao, from Tianjin municipality in northern China, said she “looked down upon” a student whose parents did not make much money and could not be compared to another student’s mother who “earns more money working for one year than your mother does working for 50 years”.
In a separate situation, Xiao told her class she would “slap those in the face who speak during breaks” adding that she believed only strict discipline led to good grades.
The local education bureau later announced they had revoked Xiao’s teaching license after an investigation.