A second grade primary school student is unlikely to have any vision-related problems, after doctors successfully repaired his scratched cornea early yesterday, which was damaged by a teacher who angrily threw a pencil at him this week.
The 9-year-old student, surnamed Dan, who attends Shuifeng Road Elementary School in Yangpu district, had been using a mechanical pencil for his school work on Wednesday, after his teacher, a woman in her 40s surnamed Ma, confiscated it, saying that the pencil was not suitable for handwriting.
When she found that Dan had retrieved the pencil and was still using it, she hastily grabbed it - and threw it at him, hitting his eye. The injury to his cornea was serious enough to warrant surgery yesterday.
"Fortunately, the damage occurred just beneath the center of his left pupil," Zhao Peiquan, the doctor who performed the surgery on Dan, told the Global Times yesterday. "The surgery was a success and his eyesight should be fine, though we will have to wait a few more days to be sure that no complications arise."
Local police took Ma away after the incident, the school's administration office confirmed yesterday, but declined to comment further on the issue.
The district's education bureau, meanwhile, condemned the action yesterday, calling it "wrong and immoral."
"Ma definitely acted in violation of the Teachers Law," an officer, surnamed Yao, from Yangpu's education bureau, told the Global Times yesterday.
The severity of her punishment, however, will only be determined upon a full investigation of the case, he said.
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