Many elementary and middle schools in Beijing have tightened their safety measures after a 41-year-old man stabbed eight young students to death in southeastern China. As a public security expert points out, the awareness of self-protection is important, but it is being ignored by both schools and families.
Zhang Cheng brings us more.
Reporter:
Family cars, teachers and policemen. Community patrols have been stretched across the streets in front of many school gates in the Chinese capital this week, following the bloody attack in southeastern China's Nanping last week.
"We see one police patrol car everyday near the gate lately, since the Nanping tragedy. In fact, we already have a watch-spot at every avenue near our campus."
"I drop-off and pick-up my kid everyday. If I cannot make it, I will ask somebody else to do it for me."
Forty-one-year-old Zheng Minsheng, a former community doctor, used a long kitchen knife to randomly attack students waiting outside a school last Tuesday morning, leaving eight dead and five injured. He has been charged with murder.
A recent survey across ten provinces and cities conducted by the China Education Society shows some "traditional" dangers threatening the campuses, such as drowning, traffic accidents or food poisoning, have been in decline in recent years, but violence is increasing. One researcher says it is noted that more assaults are not carried out by the students themselves but by young or even middle-aged men.
Liu Haixia, a safety coordinator at the Experimental Middle School attached to Beijing Normal University, says she has seen campus-safety measures tightened increasingly.
"During the school days, students are only allowed to go out in an emergency. In those cases, they are required to get permission from their teachers or nurses first and then call parents to pick them up."
In fact, young Chinese students do not lack for safety education. Liu Haixia says although most safety classes are only introduced after incidents, they are becoming more practical and rational.
"Sometimes our students are robbed by young delinquents, but we will not encourage them to fight back, because getting away from the danger of assault is more important than their cell-phones."
Wang Dawei, a public-safety expert at the Chinese People's Public Security University, suggests that schools should establish a more proactive safety net that centers on the self-protection awareness of students themselves.
"Of course, it is not wrong to rely on the teachers' fists to protect students. But we need more proactive protection, and this kind of protection should be based on students' self-protection awareness."
Officer Wang Dawei notes that the proactive safety mechanism relies heavily on effective training, but unfortunately many students are not interested in these classes, compared to the tutorials for exams.
