The tragedy has unleashed a wave of anger from primary school teachers across the country.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
This tragedy has unleashed a wave of anger from primary school teachers across South Korea, who have started to share their experiences of being bullied by overbearing parents and unruly children.
They say parents frequently push them to breaking point, by calling their personal phones every hour of the day and weekends, incessantly and unfairly complaining.
For the past six weeks, tens of thousands of teachers have rallied in Seoul, claiming they are now so scared of being called child abusers, they are unable to discipline their students and intervene as they attack each other.
Traditionally, Korea had a very strong culture of respecting teachers, he explained, but because of the country’s rapid economic growth, many parents are now highly educated.
Another teacher, Kwon, told us that in the 10 years he had been teaching he had taken two periods of sick leave to cope with depression and panic attacks, triggered by the stress caused by parents and pupils.
Shin Min-hyang, who runs the organisation Solidarity for the Protection of Human Rights of Students and Parents, admitted much of the behaviour highlighted over the past month was unacceptable, but argued that these cases were outliers.
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How about not giving the parents the teachers’ personal phone number for starters. Every and all contact should be through a school email or chat app.
And any email from a parent harassing or threatening a teacher gets escalated to the principal.
If it continues, the pupil is expelled from the school
If it continues, the pupil is expelled from the school
I don’t agree with this. A child of an emotionally unstable parent needs consistency and support.
If it’s bad it goes to court.
Of course the teaching profession situation is horrendous, as noted. We should also notice the labor law issues. Teachers are using their personal phone for work, and that outside of working hours. It was not written, but I suppose that the school is neither paying their phone bills nor for overtime. If the school had to pay those costs, the administration would probably outlaw overtime work and personal phone use, and a small part of the problem would be instantly solved.
I’m not sure about S Korea, but if it’s anything like Japan, the teachers are viewed more as being responsible for things like students missing class or getting in trouble. That’s a lot of stress for a bunch of humans that they’re not with 24/hrs a day.
I’m not sure how a teacher would be able to have that responsibility unless in a small community? Like unless it’s a employee/boss relationship where there’s a monetary incentive, how would they convince them?
Is it like social pressuring, where the fear of missing class would set them up for failure? Very interesting cultural viewpoint
