Tales out of School: Strange Stories from the Global Classroom
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Your support makes all the difference.Punch and sue me show: A Spanish school teacher has filed charges against a theatre company after an actor playing a foul-mouthed, clownish character in a children's play walked into the audience and hit her with a plastic club.
The teacher, watching the play with a group of seven-year-olds and four of her colleagues in a Madrid suburb, said that although uninjured, she felt "mistreated and humiliated". The incident happened during a performance of The Truncheon Puppets.
Cap, gown and aqualung: Chen Kai-ling wore a mask and oxygen tank to her graduation ceremony last week, and received her diploma at a depth of 26ft under the Pacific. The entire graduating class of Homei Elementary School took part in Taiwan's first underwater graduation, showing off the results of three months of diving training. Parents and teachers see it as a way to encourage the children to stay in their seaside community after completing their education. They hope commercial diving could become a future economic driver for the tiny town of Lungtung, located on the rocky coast east of the capital Taipei.
Students dived from a boat to collect their waterproofed diplomas from their principal, along with a handshake and a thumbs-up sign. The presentations were made under a cloth banner tied between two submerged boulders.
Instead of tossing their graduation hats in the air, each threw an abalone - a type of shellfish harvested in the area - over their heads to symbolise their commitment to preserving the marine environment.
Short, sharp shock: The Thai government wants to send violent students to army camps for three-month stints as punishment, a proposal prompted by continuing clashes between students from rival vocational schools in Bangkok and its suburbs.
Shootings of students from rival schools are common. The proposal was one of several made by a committee comprised of representatives from the ministry of education, the army, navy and police, The Nation newspaper reported. The army's top brass has not yet responded to the idea. Another proposal is to remove all insignia from uniforms and other items that identify the school a student attends.
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