Teachers in Korea Get No Respect?
From the Korea Times:
Huh, a 30-year-old teacher, had a rude awakening in his first year at a high school in Kyonggi Province.
“Things have changed so much from when I was in high school, and even then teachers complained that we didn’t treat them in the proper manner. These days, students openly criticize teachers’ skills, chat or text message on mobile phones during classes and even miss school for days without explanation. We as teachers are supposed to be fine with that,” said Huh, who believes that frequent news reports about corrupt teachers and failing students are further eroding the respect for his profession.
Historically Korea has maintained a culture that payed great respect to teachers and scholars, however by reading news reports like this it appears this culture is changing. The question I have is it the students or is the teachers that is changing? If a teacher lets them use cell phones in class, why is the teacher surprised that the student is zoning them out? If teachers spent more time acting like teachers instead of spreading anti-Japanese hatred and North Korean propaganda maybe they would earn more respect in the classroom.
It sounds like the teachers are as much to blame for what is going on as the students.Â
Seems like a lot has changed in the past ten years. When I was in Korean language classes, we even turned off our pagers (cell "hand" phones were popular, but still a lot of "bbi-bbi" back then).
Yeah, why be surprised, if he lets them use cells? Respect is earned, and perhaps teachers in general have not. On the other hand, Korean society has become *much* more less conservative in the past couple of decades, like a change from the U.S. in the 50s to the late 60s.
I'm torn here. Most of me is glad to see the students more liberated. That part of me remembers how depressing it was to me to see so many zombified-teens walking the streets late at night, as I was leaving work teaching in the hakwons, still in their school uniforms and perhaps not even finished with their rounds at the different hakwons even at 11 or 11:30 PM. But, part of me frets for the plight of Korean education too……
From what I can tell from afar, it doesn't seem like the society has progressed in making college education what it is here in the States to coorespond with the drop in the high schools. Here in the US, high school is a joke, we think, but college is serious – it is where your future is made. In Korea it has always been the opposite. They really need to pick up reforming the university if they want to do something long term about the teens behaving badly…..give up on trying to regain domination when they are too young and focus on making them have faith while in college…
I'm sorry, but I'm from the old school.
The unit had a program to put GI's into middle and high schools all around Chunchon in the early 80's. A (female) teacher caught a kid reading a NY City phonebook-sized manhwa in class. She confiscated it, ripped it in half like Charles Atlas, and then beat the kid's ass. Took less time than it takes to write this.
As an added bonus, she beat his ass again on the way out of the classroom at the end of the period. And I'm not talking about 'love taps'.
None of the university grad GI's teaching (including a few company-grade officers) ever had a problem with discipline in the classroom.
From all I've been able to gather from multiple sources, kids are allowed to get away with murder nowadays. Maybe part of the reason is that 'school' is the part of the day that kids' parents don't actually pay out hard-earned money for, therefore, 'school' is really not where parents expect the kids to learn anything. If really necessary, teacher can be handsomely bribed to fluff up Muffy & Skippy's grades a bit for the college app, to insure that their class ranking is something approaching respectable.
If these kids were chronically fucking up in an expensive English hakweon and were expelled with no rebate of tuition, well, certainly parents might begin to think that the fault might possibly lay with Muffy or Skippy.
Me personally, on day 1 I would lay down the law on electronic devices. And then turn the first one I got my hands on into plastic fragments.
Yes, the whole thing bothers me. (I had to write more)
Living in Vancouver a few years ago, I started to invite the children of ROK NCO's I used to work with to come and stay with us. I shelled out the tuition for the best English intensive programs in BC, and we put the kids up. My rationale for doing this was (and remains) that children of NCO's get less of a shot at a decent education than the children from more affluent families. It's true in both the ROK and the US.
As it happened, my wife was director of one of the programs in downtown Vancouver, and she's calling me at the office 11 times a day to complain about Scooter Kim or Patsy Park's disruptive behavior in class. I was flabbergasted, having known their parents for years, carrying rucksacks over 1100m hills, going to weddings, doing chute shake-out at 4:00 AM…In three cases, I was the go-between in marriages between SR NCO's in the Special Ops units…
The kids at home were perfect angels…volunteering their help at daily police call and area beautification, keeping their rooms in inspection-ready state.
So it was (and still is) mystifying to us that they would turn into such little bastards in the classroom.
I have did volunteer English teaching for 5th and 6th grade level classes and they were all very well behaved every time I taught classes. It appears that once they become teenagers is when the discipline is breaking down in the classrooms.
I don't condone beating students like what was done years ago but teachers sure the heck shouldn't be allowing cell phones in the classroom.
That is pretty comendable of you by the way for providing free English language education to the children of ROK NCOs. Overall did it work out pretty well and the students learned better English?
I attended an American School in Kuwait for 11 years, before thqe Iraqi invasion forced our family to leave Kuwait for Korea. A few days after arrival, my father went to the local school board to see if he can enroll my sister and I into an American school here. The bureaucrat took one look at my father and simply said ''Don't you know the law?. Your children can't attend a foreign school''. Thus began my adventure with the Korean education system.
During my time in the American school, sure we had good and bad teachers, but the good teachers, besides teaching us the secrets of algebra, english literature, etc., inspired us to become a better person. And the student body as a whole respected them. Okay, maybe not all, but I didn't hear anyone badmouth the good teachers.
The Korean teachers on the other hand just came into the classroom called roll, told us to memorize this and that, made some political rhetoric and left after the hour was up.
The homeroom teachers on the other hand were busy calling up
students and demanding why the grades for the college entrance prep tests were so low, finishing with the words ''Do you seriously think you can go to college?''.
When the students' parents came to discuss the future prospects of the student in question, then the homeroom teacher, who will stamp his seal of approval on the college application documents, will expect the parents to come with plenty of gifts in hand. It's no wonder teachers in Korea have no respect.
The stupidity starts in kindergarten. The parents pay the money so the teachers write good reports. If the report is not good – the teacher is blamed and the child moved elsewhere. In the case of ESL it is easy to blame the foreign teacher because they have no idea what is being said abaout them. It is not in the best (financial) interest of the kindergarten owner to be honest about the student's behavior or ability – even when the student has obvious learning disablities that could be addressed with a little honesty and communication. Private after-school academies (hagwans) are the same. Responsibilty for the student's learning is on the teacher – not the parent.
Parents usually send their kids to kindergarten from a very early age, even if the mother does not work. This gives the mother free time. The mother 'wants' to feel that this is in the best interest of the child. She 'wants' to hear positive reports about her child's study/behavior.
By university, the idea that the student is responsible for their own learning (or failure) has long since become a non-issue. Just like kindergarten – they expect a good report.
This situation will not change in a hurry because the mothers with sound financial status are the ones who call the shots, and they have no vested interest in change. They are the 'early education' trend setters.
I have taught teachers and am also in two minds about them. Some are no more that political machines and others are very dedicated and concerned about the kids. In terms of ESL, some have told me that they would like to try and teach in English, but are ridiculed by the students and forced to speak Korean because the students refuse to acknowledge them when they speak English.
I have also seen students studying overseas who – even though they wanted to go there and their parents paid a lot of money for them to do so – did not perform well at all. And just like kindergarten, the mothers blamed the country,college,homestay – or whatever (and these were not a few scattered cases). I think it all goes back to the parents needing to take responsibility.
This is something in the teaching profession here in the US you hear a lot. The divide is even sharper than that. There is something about the time between 8th and 9th grade that just makes it very different. Something about the students (or their attitudes) changes over the summer…