'Corporal Punishment' for Unmasked Children: Teachers Are Taping Masks to Children's Faces
If you want someone to wear a mask, the first step is to normally just ask. But some teachers have decided to go with the option of just taping masks to their students’ faces instead.
In October, there were several reports across the country of teachers taping face masks on their students’ faces.
The most recent happened in Beloit, Wisconsin.
At McNeel Intermediate School, Fox News reported that the police are investigating after a student claimed that a teacher duct-taped a mask to his face.
The 13-year-old boy said he pulled his mask down for a moment because he was having difficulty breathing. When the teacher told him to put the mask on he responded, “I can’t breathe. Give me a moment.”
“She got clearish yellowish tape, pulled up my mask up to my nose and wrapped the tape around my head five times. I’m thinking in my head. I’m like, this is crazy. Why is she doing this?” the student told WKOW.
The student’s parent said, “when he came home, he (had) a red mark on the back of his neck area. And it was a little bit red around his face.”
According to the police report that the Wisconsin State Journal reviewed, the teacher claimed it was all a joke.
“The teacher told police she did tape the front of the student’s mask to his face, but only as a joke after she said the student challenged her to do so and then he laughed about it. The teacher said she removed the tape, after which the student wore his mask properly.”
The student said that he did not feel like he could go back to school after the incident because he did not trust anyone.
“I’m very, very upset. I’m gonna keep pursuing this until my son gets justice and my family gets justice,” the parent said.
In response to this incident, a protest was then planned for Nov. 5 to take place in front of the School District of Beloit. The school district and the Beloit Police Department then decided to close the schools, “for the safety of the students and staff.“
This may sound like an outlandish, one-time kind of incident — some COVID-hypersensitive teacher just went off the rails. But there have been other reports of this happening in different states earlier in October and September.
Near Las Vegas, in Clark County School District, one fourth-grader forgot to put his mask back on after getting a drink of water. The substitute teacher, instead of simply instructing the student to put the mask back on, pulled him to the front of the class and taped the mask across the top of his face.
“I was furious, furious. I was scared for my son on what kind of long-term effect it is going to have on him socially, the fact that the entire class was laughing,” the student’s mother told KVVU-TV.
The student said that this was not the first time that had happened. He recalled up to five other times that this has happened to students in the class.
KKTV News in Colorado Springs reported a similar incident happening at Chinook Trail Middle School in October.
The school investigated the situation and found that, while teachers at Chinook Trail did not go to the extremes of the Clark County teacher in Nevada, teachers instructed students to tape masks to their faces.
“After examining all evidence, the district determined a policy/procedure was violated by the teaching team of 642. While we found that the teachers did NOT affix any student’s mask to their face, we did learn teachers directed students to affix their mask to their face with tape; and students believed they were required, by a teacher, to use tape to affix their mask to their face,” the school principal wrote in a letter to parents.
The fact that children are wearing masks in school is still questionable.
Children are obviously still in the developmental stage. They are not just learning information in school, but also learning how to socially interact and be with other people. Their emotions, social skills and cognitive skills all depend on having healthy interactions with peers, teachers and parents. Numerous experts and studies have shown this.
“Face-to-face interactions between a parent and child are the building blocks of the child’s emotional, social, and cognitive growth,” the Hanen Centre reported.
It’s really quite common sense.
“The right socially interactive environment will help children develop strong language skills, creativity, social intelligence, and confidence,” Tender Care Learning Center advocated.
For students to have that face-to-face interaction taken away from them in school can be detrimental. For teachers to enforce and humiliate students by taping masks to their faces could damage students even further. That kind of humiliation handed down from an authority figure, in front of peers, is going to cause problems.
As the mother of the Clark County School fourth-grader said, “It’s crazy. Corporal punishment in schools should not be happening.”
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