South Korea debates students discipline

By ⋅ April 5, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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By Jason Strother

Cho Eun Ae has a searing memory from high school. The 23-year-old South Korean recalls when she was a freshman, a teacher got really angry with her for chatting with a friend during class.

“He shouted, open your hand! I opened my hand and he smashed it with a stick,” she said. “I don’t remember how many times, but it hurt a lot.”

Many Koreans have had a similar experience. Teachers were permitted to wield what many euphemistically called the stick of love. Corporal punishment was seen as a part of Korea’s Confucian educational tradition.


But some teachers took it too far. 
 
Last year, a student used a cell phone to secretly video the beating of a classmate at the hands of his sixth grade teacher. In the video, the teacher pushed and punched the boy, as other kids looked on.

Warning: Video may not be suitable for sensitive viewers


The video went viral, and many parents, students and teachers were horrified. 
The teacher in question lost his job, but did not face criminal charges. Soon after, Seoul’s Department of Education forbade corporal punishment. On March 1st, the beginning of the school year in Korea, a nationwide ban went into effect.


But the prohibition has left some educators struggling to find alternative ways to maintain order in the classroom. 
 
Ra Dong Chul, principal of the Jung-ang all-girl high school in Seoul, said he supports the ban on corporal punishment, but there are indirect ways to physically discipline students.


For instance, students could be made to stand up for long periods of time during class, he said, or they could run laps around the school’s playground or pick up trash in the neighborhood.


Ra said those methods are allowed under the Ministry of Education’s new disciplinary guidelines. The government has also said that forcing students to do push-ups is acceptable.


But Ra said he isn’t going to implement those tactics right away, in part, because the Seoul school district and many others don’t agree with the Ministry’s new guidelines.

Indirect physical discipline isn’t any better than corporal punishment, according to Dong Hoon Chan, a committee chairman at the Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union.

“We support non-physical discipline,” Dong said, “like sending kids to a self-reflection room or having the students go on a mountain hike with their teacher to help improve their communication.”


Dong said that while he supports the ban, he thinks the Ministry of Education should have had more discussions with teachers on how best to control their students before it took effect.

But some students say the ban was a mistake to begin with. 

According to18-year old Park Bum-jun, teachers have been left with no authority, and bad kids are taking advantage of it.


”Since the ban, kids hit their teachers because they know they can get away with it. I know the ban was supposed to protect a student’s human rights, but it’s really hurting the teachers rights now,” Park said.


17-year old Lee Chun Joo agrees.

“I think our society needs some kind of punishment to make students change their behavior,” she said. “Teachers didn’t hit students out of anger; it was to make them better students. They want their students to succeed. This was our tradition”


It was for those reasons, she said, that the stick of love got its name. 


Discussion

6 comments for “South Korea debates students discipline”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OHMH66H4EZOGSCSLDG76RHVHDU Nooria

    Nooria Hossaini
    Student from Nvcc
    CST 229 class

    OMG, this article reminded me of my childhood. My first grade teacher in Afghanistan beat me with a long stick many times. I know I was lazy and forgetful, but she had no rights to hit me. I still can picture her face and that stick. It would be great if the ministry of education around the globe banned teachers from physically abusing the students. However, teachers got to have certain limit to control the unruly students, meanwhile students must respect their teachers.

  • http://profiles.google.com/jason.whang T. Jason Whang

    People need to know that corporal punishment in Korea comes from a different place than in the rest of the world. In a traditional Korean household it’s the grandparents and aunts and uncles that levy the punishment on the children. Parents in a traditional Korean household instead are supposed to only offer love and encouragement. Because the traditional Korean household has been ravaged by modern development parents no longer have extended family around and have not adapted enough to take up the slack. Ever since the War it’s mostly been left to educators to be the primary source of discipline. Teachers spanked children because the parents didn’t! A whole generation of Koreans will tell you about the beatings they received as children but will reminisce about it the same way many Americans remember being spanked for hitting our siblings. Yes, there was pain in those memories but when we look back we see that it was necessary.

    This is less an issue of teachers stepping over the lines and more of parents not approaching it. Imagine if an entire generation of Americans were raised without any discipline and parents felt completely absolved of any responsibility to curb their childrens’ behavior. Our educators would either quit, riot, or starting doling out spankings. Someone has to do it.

    • Anonymous

      “Imagine if an entire generation of Americans were raised without any discipline and parents felt completely absolved of any responsibility to curb their children’s behavior. Our educators would either quit, riot, or start doling out spankings.”

      Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mr. Whang. But there is little imagination needed. We are currently witnessing exactly what you have described in this generation of children. And most of the teachers I listen to already want to quit.

    • 상영 김

      Fuck u who gave the fucking right that adults should hit kids WRONG WRONG WRONG.

  • Anonymous

    In the 1950′s I went to Catholic School and corporal punishment was the norm. The Dominican nuns were allowed to beat us with ping pong paddles, long blackboard pointers or their hands. This was not acceptale 50+ years ago, nor is it acceptable now, even under the name of tradition or love. When I heard this story today on NPR it brought back all the feelings of shame that I felt as a child, none of it EVER made me a better person, and certainly being beaten NEVER made me feel loved. The scars from that treatment have lasted a lifetime and will likely never go away. My parents did not find that behavior at school unacceptable because what they did to me at home was worse, but since it was out of (what they thought) was love and (what they thought) was only for my own good and what I deserved, it was socially accepted. IT IS NOT OK. Female Genital Mutilation is not OK. Ethnic Cleansing is not OK. Holding a position of power, at any level, and using that authority to dominate, humiliate or physically harm others in the name of love or tradition is a gross misuse of that power and we need to raise our voices against such atrocities. My belief Mr. T. Jason Whang is that your reasoning is so misguided in thinking that “someone has to do it” that you actually believe what you are saying, which is tragic. There is no humanity in this logic and a nation cannot survive on brutality. Thankfully the Department of Education has forbidden this deplorable punishment. We make progress on this planet one very small step at a time.

  • Anonymous

    i’m sorry, i grew up partly in korea and no matter what the kid does wrong, beating him or her is NOT the answer and does NOT accomplish anything but scar the children. I’m now 37 and i still remember being slapped across the face so hard by my 4th grade teacher that i fell down from a standing position. the horrible sin i committed for this “corporal punishment”? i was 5 minutes late in coming to physical education class b/c i was in the restroom (*with* her permission) with stomach pains and the runs. i was then shamed into not telling anyone. it’s one thing to get your palms hit w/ rulers or your calves hit with bamboo sticks, but it’s a whole different thing to get slapped that hard across the face.
    teachers do not teach in korea for the noble purposes that teachers in america select their profession. at least in my experience up to 5th grade, every teacher i had was monomaniacally interested in receiving gifts from the parents of their students. and using children as emotional and physical punching bags. just so you know, it was NORMAL practice to be asked on the first day of class by your teacher several probing questions by show of hands to determine how wealthy your family was and therefore how much bribery (they called them “gifts”) they can expect during the year from the parents. questions like “how many of you have cars at home? how many have drivers? how many have housekeepers? how many have pianos?” if your parents happened to be poor, you got beat more. that’s just how it was. even though my parents were well off i saw kids who came to school in no-brand-name clothing and who never raised their hands to these crazy questions get beat a lot more often than me….