My chest feels too tight, Lee Min-so * wrote in her diary on June 5 as she entered her classroom to teach. I think I’m going to trip and fall. I have no idea where I am.
The primary school teacher stated in a letter dated July 3 that she” wanted to let go” because she had grown so overwhelmed by the chaos of labor.
Two weeks later, her colleagues discovered the 23-year-old lifeless in her class store cupboard. She had committed suicide.
Park Du-yong, Min-so’s aunt, tries to contain his tears as he organizes her tiny, unoccupied apartment, which is now just her animal home. Unmade, her base is surrounded by a stack of designs from her first-graders expressing their love for her. A collection of collection books on how to deal with depression is located below.
Park claims that his aunt, who had been teaching for just over a month, had followed her family into the field, realizing her childhood dream. She had loved the children, he claims.
Park thus took on the role of investigator in the days following the death of his cousin, which police immediately attributed to a recent divorce. Thousands of diaries, job logs, and text messages were found by him.
They revealed that Min-So had received numerous complaints from her parents in the months leading up to her death. Most recently, one of her students used a pencil to slash another child’s head, and she had been involved in tense later phone calls and messages with the kids.
Primary school instructors in South Korea have become enraged as a result of this disaster, sharing their stories of being bullied by controlling parents and disruptive kids.
They claim that their parents constantly and badly criticize them by calling their individual phones at all hours of the day and on weekends.
Some of the concerns are particularly ominous in nature. A informing off is often referred to as psychological abuse, while teachers may be reported for child abuse for restraint of a violent child. For charges may result in educators being fired from their positions right away.
After refusing to answer a mother’s request to call their baby every morning, one teacher was the subject of complaints. After removing reward stickers from a child who had used scissors to cut his colleague, another was accused of emotional abuse.
Tens of thousands of educators have banded together in Seoul over the past six weeks, claiming they are unable to control their students or step in when they attack one another due to their growing fear of being called infant abusers.
They charge kids with abusing a 2014 child security legislation that mandates that educators who are charged with child abuse are immediately suspended.
At one objection, teacher Kim Jin-seo, 28, claimed that she had suicidal thoughts and needed three weeks off from work after two specifically abrasive complaints. In one instance, she asked a problematic student to use the restroom for five minutes to collect their thoughts, and in the other, her parents were notified of the child’s altercation. The class made her apologize in both cases.
We instructors feel incredibly disempowered, Kim said, adding that she had reached the point where she did not feel she had carefully instruct her course. Those who have personally experienced this have undergone significant change, and those who don’t own have witnessed it occur to others, so it is crippling in either case.
The hyper-competitive culture of South Korea, where almost all depends on academic success, is what fuels this culture of complaining. From a very young age, individuals strongly compete for the best grades in an effort to one moment enroll in the top universities. Parents send their kids to costly extra-curricular universities known as hagwons outside of school, which are open from 5 am to 10 pm. People in Korea used to have five or six kids, but now the majority only have one, giving them only one chance at success.
Rising injustice, according to Professor Kim Bong-jae, who trains coming teachers at Seoul National University of Education, was also to pick.
He explained that while Korea has historically had a very powerful society of respecting teachers, many parents today have advanced degrees as the nation’s economy has grown quickly. This indicates that they frequently despise educators, he claimed. ” They believe they have covered them with their income.” This fosters a strong sense of entitlement.
Another instructor, Kwon, revealed to us that during his ten years of teaching, he took two sick leave periods to treat depression and anxiety attacks brought on by parents’ and students’ stress.
He claimed that up until four years ago, families could only take problematic students outside or to the back of the room. However, since then, child abuse lawsuits have been filed by parents. Kwan just relocated to a class in an underprivileged neighborhood and found that parents’ behavior in wealthy places was significantly worse.
When all you can think about is sending your own child to a good college, their mentality is” only my child matters ,” he said,” and you become very selfish.” He is certain that this force reaches the kids and has an impact on their behavior as well. ” They act out by hurting each other because they are unable to discharge this force.”
Crime and bullying among students are well-known issues in South Asian schools. The Glory, a well-liked K-drama from last year, was centered on the quest for retribution against her original jerks. It depicted some ominous acts of violence and was based on actual occurrences. In a twist of fate, the movie’s chairman was made to apologize after being accused of harassment.
Under pressure to address the problem, the government announced in February that students’ records of abuse may be taken into consideration when applying to universities. This has increased parents’ concerns and caused them to put more pressure on teachers to correct their child’s transgressions, despite their best efforts to encourage students not to hector one another.
The organization Solidarity for the Protection of Human Rights of Students and Parents’ Shin Min-hyang acknowledged that much of the behavior that has come to light over the past fortnight was intolerable but argued that these instances were exceptional.
” The vast majority of families behave well, and we worry that we will no longer be able to express our worries through the programs we currently use.” It is wrong that families are being blamed for the crime, she claimed.
Shin acknowledged, however, that she had previously voiced her displeasure with instructors and wished she could have more control over the instruction and discipline given to her baby.
One family, who declined to be identified, expressed concern that complaints had gotten out of hand. He displayed to us the details of a class discussion in which families encouraged one another to tease their teachers about choices they had made. Use your family’s and friends’ phones to phone if your number is blocked, according to a chat parent.
The unidentified parent warned us that others would suffer if teachers didn’t have the authority to deal with difficult students.
Moreover, students might be given fewer instructors immediately. Less than a quarter of teachers( 24 %) were happy with their jobs in 2023, down from 68 % in 2006, when the survey first came out. The vast majority of respondents stated that they had recently considered quitting their jobs.
The government has acknowledged that its rooms are” broken.” It has released new guidelines for teachers, stating that they will be able to restrain problematic students if needed and remove them from the classroom. According to them, teachers may decline to meet after work and parents must agree in advance with them on the date and time of discussions.
Lee Ju-Ho, the education minister of South Korea, expressed his hope that these actions” would gain institutions to what they should be.”
However, there are many in this room who contend that South Korea’s entire educational system, as well as its narrow definition of success, needs to be reformed because all stands to gain from a culture where levels do not make or break lives.
* At the request of the deceased’s relatives, we have changed her name.
Lee Hyun Choi and Hosu Lee provided extra coverage.