Who's guarding our schools?
(China Today)
Updated: 2004-11-02 15:11

Between August and September 2004, there were four gruesome instances of children being hurt or killed in school, according to media reports.

KEEP THEM SMILING: Children playing at a kindergarten in Nankai District, Tianjin

A gatekeeper of the kindergarten at the No.1 Hospital of Peking University stabbed 15 children, aged two to six, and three female teachers on August 4. One child died. Two other children and a teacher were seriously wounded.

Less than two weeks later in Hebei Province, a knife-wielding attacker rushed into a classroom at the Shijiazhuang Education Center for Women and Children during an English class and kidnapped two children. The two children were eventually safely recovered.

On September 11, another attacker brandishing a knife broke into a kindergarten in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, slashing at the children. Twenty-eight children were injured.

In the fourth attack nine days later, a man broke into the Juxian No.1 Experimental Primary School, Shandong Province and wounded 25 students.

“Although the wounds have healed, my child is still living a nightmare. He keeps silent all day long. Sleeping at night, he quivers. In the morning, his forehead is covered with cold sweat,” said a mother of an injured pupil in the bloody assault on the experimental school in Shandong.

There have been other instances. Earlier in the year, a nurse and her four-year-old son were axed to death at the Mengtaisuo Kindergarten in Xinji, Hebei Province. At a rural primary school in Dangchang County, Gansu Province, a local man seriously injured 15 pupils with a kitchen knife.

In light of these events, schools and governments at all levels are beginning to put more thought into the security of children.

On September 21, Zhou Ji, Minister of Education, stressed that government education departments and schools must build a system for administrative accountability. “Severe punishment” should be meted out to any department or school not adopting the system. The minister required that education departments at the provincial level report the security conditions in and around local schools to the Ministry of Education each month.

Most primary schools in Ningbo, a coastal city in Zhejiang Province, have set up IC card machines called “net police” at their gates, beginning at the new term in September. Before entering and leaving school, all students swipe their cards on the machines, which relay to their parents via computer that they have arrived at or are exiting school. This way, parents can keep track if their children are at school or not.

The government of Shandong took a more drastic measure, which some lawyers have questioned. Five days after the Juxian Primary School incident, the provincial public security department released an urgent circular giving police the authority, if warning is neglected, to shoot perpetrators of violent crimes against children on the spot if doing so may ensure the children’s safety.

Targets of Adult Frustration

Young children, weak and relatively defenseless, are easy targets of attackers venting their personal spite.

SCHOOL SECURITY: A child is rescued by police from Shijiazhuang No. 3 Kindergarten after a man with a knife took two children hostage People familiar to Jia Qingyou, the suspect of the Juxian school case, disbelieve that he could do such a thing. What led to Jia’s actions?

According to the police in charge of the case, Jia, a taxi driver, once asked a bus conductress for music tapes but was refused. Flaring up, he quarreled with her. The conductress told her boss of the argument, who then hired some men to beat Jia up. Jia was in the hospital for nearly a week and paid 1,000 yuan ($121) in medical costs out of his own pocket.

Another thing bothering Jia was that he had asked the teacher of his child who was studying at the Juxian No.1 Experimental Primary School to change a better classroom seat for the kid and was refused.

On the morning of September 20, Jia carried a kitchen knife while going to confront the bus manager, but never found him. Instead, he paid a fateful visit to the primary school.

Yang Guozhu, a 41-year-old single man with a lame right leg, is the lead suspect in the Suzhou kindergarten case. Many of his fellow villagers considered Yang, who seemed fairly introverted, to be honest and good-tempered. He said he was very fond of children.

“He liked children so much. How can I accept this? How would he do such a cruel thing?” said Shao Hongzhi, a friend of Yang, after hearing about the case.

According to Yang’s fellow villagers, Yang’s alleged behavior may have had something to do with the death of his parents.

Yang grew up in an impoverished village. On May 24, 2002, Yang’s parents took their own lives by drinking poison. Yang believed it was the humiliation brought on by local government officials that caused their suicides. Yang had repeatedly sued the officials but was not satisfied because he failed in bringing out a legal recourse.

Yang subsequently abandoned his clock-repairing business, playing cards with a few friends all day. He confided in his buddy Shao, “Nobody can save me now. I have nothing.”

Even in court, Yang admitted that he did not want to hurt those children. Originally, he said he wanted to target another primary school in Wuzhong District. But when he arrived at the school, nobody was there because it was Saturday, so he left. On his way back, while walking by the kindergarten, he saw children sitting in class, so he simply decided on a new channel to release his frustration.

Li Yunlong, a law professor with the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences, concluded, “Yang Guozhu’s motive was related to his family problems. He wanted to draw society’s attention by exacting retribution from it. Since he found that he had no power to get revenge directly, he chose a weaker group.”

Tong Lihua, Chairwoman of the Beijing Juvenile Legal Aid and Research Center, stated that many Chinese citizens have no sense or knowledge of the law. One result, Tong added, is such tragedies against vulnerable portions of society, such as children.

Loopholes in School Security

After the nurse and her son were killed at the kindergarten in Hebei Province in February, an investigation found that most kindergartens in Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, had no security staff, only gatekeepers. Another investigation showed that over 80 percent of primary and secondary schools in China employ old men or middle-aged women as gatekeepers who have no training and are not strong enough to stop an attacker.

“In Chengdu, most school gatekeepers are retired people,” said an official from the local educational bureau.

Few seem to pay much attention to the responsibility of gatekeepers. The official added, “All school staff, including sponsors, administrators and teachers, ought to carefully study and strictly observe relevant state regulations on school management. However, they never do.”

During the investigation into the case of the kindergarten of Peking University, police found that 52-year-old Xu Heping, the suspected murderer, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1999. However, two years ago, he started to work as a gatekeeper at the kindergarten on a recommendation from his wife. The law clearly stipulates that people who have a mental condition are forbidden to hold school administrative positions. In this case, the school authorities lack the basic sense of law.

Zhang Xuemei, secretary-general of the Minors Protecting Specialty, a subgroup of the All-China Lawyers’ Association, pointed out that under both the Law on Protection of Minors and the Education Law, schools are responsible for their students’ safety on campus.

“In China, school administration is still irregular. There are many holes,” said Zhang.

Shi Fumao, a lawyer with the Beijing Juvenile Law Aid and Research Center, said that the incidents show that gatekeepers cannot function as security guards for schools. Shi suggests that schools from kindergarten through the secondary level set up a security system.

Who Ensures Security?

Tong believes that it is not enough only to protect children at school. Family, society and government should take up the responsibility, too.

An investigation showed that 77 percent of perpetrators of school violence in Beijing were not students, but came from off school grounds.

According to current law, public security departments are responsible for ensuring the security of all civilians, including students. This means that public security organs should take the main responsibility to reduce and prevent school violence.

Tong endorses establishing an interactive system between schools and public security organs. Under such a system, schools would report to police “unstable factors,” especially those that may lead to violence. Public security organs, for their part, would conduct security publicity. Some schools have already adopted the system.

Pi Yijun, professor at China University of Political Science and Law, thinks that the Law on Protection of Minors is not feasible because there is no way to monitor local governmental implementation of the law. Many law experts in China are currently appealing to revise the law that was adopted more than a decade ago.

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