Interesting Article.............hmmmmm

Teacher apologizes for making first grader wear 'liar' sign

KUSHIRO, Hokkaido -- Red-faced educators here have apologized to the parents of a first-grade elementary school pupil whose teacher beat him and forced him to wear a sign calling him a liar, school officials said.

The teacher at the center of the allegations has conceded he was in the wrong.
"I only intended to show the boy the need to obey society's rules, but I ended up doing something terrible," the 43-year-old teacher, whose name has not been disclosed, said.
Akio Sekikawa, principal of the Kushiro Municipal Tsuruno Elementary School where the incident occurred, apologized over the incident.

"He's a very keen teacher, but there should be no corporal punishment," Sekikawa said. "We want to look at ways we can restore parents' faith in us."

School officials said that during a class on May 19 the teacher warned the boy for playing a prank on another pupil. When the boy denied any wrongdoing, the teacher slapped him in the face and kicked his leg, then taped a sign on his chest reading "liar." The teacher then forced the boy to sit in the teacher's chair at the front of the class for about five minutes. The boy was not injured.

The teacher did not report the incident to his superiors, but the boy's parents asked the school about the incident on Wednesday and the teacher's actions were exposed.