After an argument with a colleague about keeping order in class, the now convicted kindergarten teacher Wang Yun retaliated last March by adding sodium nitrite to the morning porridge of her rival’s students. All 25 children who had eaten the porridge fell ill. A little boy died.
Wang, 37, defended herself in court in Jiaozuo in central China’s Henan province on the grounds that she did not know it would make the children sick. It is still unclear whether she will appeal the death sentence.
However, in 2017, after a family quarrel, she had already put sodium nitrite – which can be used as a preservative, among other things – in her husband’s drinking cup. He was left with minor injuries.
‘Exceptionally cruel’
Hence, the court found it “exceptionally cruel” that she had bought sodium nitrite online again to put the chemical in the breakfast of the pupils “without thinking about the consequences”.
The kindergarten poisoning caused a wave of dismay in China, where teachers are more often accused of assaulting young children. Several incidents have been reported of deadly poisoning of students with yogurt by staff members fighting with colleagues or trying to cast a bad light on competing schools.
School safety is a major concern for Chinese parents. Since most parents both work, children spend long hours at school. In rural areas, older children often stay in boarding schools.
Chinese parents spend almost all their money and energy to get their child into a good school and that competition for the best education starts with day care for the very youngest.
The choice of a pricey kindergarten does not guarantee safety, as became apparent in 2017 from a shocking affair at an expensive kindergarten in the capital Beijing. Eand a kindergarten teacher was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for ‘taming’ her class with needles. Children were also given sleeping pills with lunch.
On China is currently under the spell of a new affair at a nursery school in Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. There, eight parents found traces of injections on the bodies of their children. According to state news agency Xinhua, their teacher used “ red needles and toothpicks ” when they disobeyed. Three kindergarten staff members have been arrested.
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