One October afternoon after school, two primary school girls in Funan, Anhui province made a pact to kill themselves in their empty classroom. Before drinking the poison that they hoped would lead to their death, the students scrawled "blame our deaths on our math teacher" on their classroom's blackboard. After being treated in the hospital, the girls explained that they were upset that the teacher "deliberately found fault in the girl's work after the two did not attend their make-up lessons." The teacher denies these allegations. more ›

What that buys, according to Gady Epstein at Forbes: "Weekend classes, summer schools and small group trips over three to four years before they start school at American colleges. Their teachers at the program, the two-year-old Leadership Academy Shanghai, are mostly recent graduates from the best universities in China. The instruction style is bespoke and not very Confucian: very small classes, with students challenging their teachers." Oh yes, and not only bragging rights when your kid actually gets in, but the security of presuming he might actually be qualified to take over your family business when you retire - something the older generation apparently regards as priceless. more ›

We've had some ill-tempered teachers in the past but nothing as bad as this. A 24-year-old kindergarten schoolmarm, frustrated by her wards, took a page from recent spiky activities in Xinjiang and began stabbing them with syringes as a form of discipline. She was taken into custody after parents, justifiably angry about the abuse, complained to police. One mother said her four-year-old daughter had been stabbed multiple times. The school (an unlicensed one in Jianshui) said it knew nothing about the incident and that the teacher's performance had been "good." more ›