Teacher Hits Student Video Goes Viral; Ministry to Hold Meeting

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Education and Culture Ministry plans to hold a meeting to discuss about the video depicting a teacher hitting his student. The video has gone viral since it was first posted online.

The ministry's director general of primary and secondary education Hamid Muhammad said the meeting will talk about the abuse and what measures the authority will take to address it.

"We will have the meeting this morning with the provincial [education] board chief, the municipal [education] board chief, the headmaster of that school, as well as the teacher and the student in the video," he told Tempo on Tuesday, November 7.

A 37-seconds video depicted a grown man hitting a uniformed student in a classroom. The incident is said to have happened in Pangkal Pinang, Bangka Belitung Islands. It is said that the man, a teacher, was upset with the student who called him without honorifics.

According to Hamid, that information is false.

Hamid said the incident actually happened in a private vocational school in West Kalimantan's Pontianak City. This information was given to him by the West Kalimantan Educational Board and the LPMP head.

"It has been confirmed to me that the incident happened in a private vocational school in Pontianak," he remarked.

Hamid also said that based on the information he received the incident happened on Thursday last week. He has no further details on what happened.

DIAS PRASONGKO