A primary school in eastern China’s Jiangsu province suspended a teacher after the woman told disobedient female students to slap themselves, and then asked boys in the class to smack the girls when they did not hit themselves forcefully enough.

On Dec 8, the teacher, surnamed Zhu, noticed some girls were eating snacks during her class. When she asked the girls who had snacks, nobody raised their hands to admit the mistake, according to the Guangzhou Daily.

As punishment, Zhu ordered the girls in the class to stand up and slap themselves on the face 10 times. After some of the girls hesitated or didn’t hit themselves very hard, Zhu asked the boy students if any of them were willing to slap the girls, with some of them nodding yes.

Zhu then selected some of the boys to slap their female classmates, according to the report.

The punishment went viral online after furious parents complained in their class WeChat group.

“My daughter was slapped five times by a boy. Her face was still red when she returned home,” said one parent.

Another parent challenged the teacher by asking: “Why was my girl beaten when she did not eat any of the snacks?”

A third parent demanded that the boys apologise to the girls and admonished the teacher for “letting boys believe that it is reasonable to hit girls”.

A mother of a boy who slapped a girl defended her son by saying: “My boy is young and could not stand up to a teacher who just told him to slap the girls.”

After the fury, Zhu apologised in the chat group: “I did not think carefully about my actions. It is my fault, and I apologise to all the students and parents.”

Regardless, Zhu was removed from her teaching position and could face additional punishment, said the school headmaster.

She is also under the probe of the local education authority.

“Teacher Zhu was in a volatile mood and lost her temper because of some family matters she was dealing with,” the headmaster told The Paper.

Teachers applying corporal punishment to students often trend on mainland social media.

Earlier this year, a teacher in central Hunan province caused outrage for hitting a nine-year-old girl on the head with a metal ruler, leading her to receive emergency treatment for a shattered skull.

 - SCMP