Matt at “Gusts of Popular Feeling” has blogged on the beating death of a middle-school student in Cheongju City. This seems to fit the noted 80% increase in school violence in South Korea.
Increasing School Violence? . . .
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Korean school teachers beat up their students. The students beat each other up. Someone eventually dies. I wonder where the students learned to do that?
Teachers aren’t punished. Students aren’t punished. Everything is all covered up because the school would lose face.
And people wonder why violence is on the increase. Why wouldn’t it be? Everyone gets off scot-free because there’s no accountability.
Just like the roads. I saw a girl get run over by a bus that had, of course, decided to stop not at the stop line but in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. You think that ajoshi bus driver lost his job?
Anger directed at students by teachers. Anger directed at students by other students. Anger at the foreign media by Korean citizens. Korean netizens angry about the growing arrogance of China. Angry drivers everywhere. Anger directed at illegal foreigners. Anger at fat, dope smoking legal foreigners. Anger at the Japanese. Anger at the arrogance of the Bush Administration. Koreans angry about the increasing cost of sending students overseas, due to the weak won.
Netizens and parents shocked and angered over growing bullying problem in schools.
Boy, I bet some poor farmers in Madagascar are in for some ass beatings.
Sex offenders get off pretty easy here also. A mentally disabled teen gets raped repeatedly by her grandfather and two uncles for several years, and the worst punishment they get is probation. This is just so disgusting!
Anger directed at students by teachers. Anger directed at students by other students. Anger at the foreign media by Korean citizens. Korean netizens angry about the growing arrogance of China. Angry drivers everywhere. Anger directed at illegal foreigners. Anger at fat, dope smoking legal foreigners. Anger at the Japanese.
Angry expats in the blogosphere.
If the future of a country lies with its children, then this does not bode well for the future of Korea and had better serve as a wake-up call.
Instead of hiding this sort of violence out of shame, people and the system need to deal with it before they end up with something that can not be contained with low-paying jobs and political maneuvering.
I remember an incident I heard about in the news while I was in high school here. A teacher tried to give one of his students a Taekwondo double side kick because he was acting up. The student simply stepped out of the way and the teacher fell on the floor and broke his hip. My friends got real kick out of that because we felt the teacher was well deserving.
Am I the only one who believes most of Korea’s ills today can be traced back towards education? A large number of teachers and teachers unions/groups stemmed from violent student activists and unions of the past. They were the kind of people YOU DO NOT WANT your children to learn from. Tragically once the democracy movement ended, they left their studies and became the teachers. Granted most of those teachers did have a legitimate reason to be angry(bad government, dictatorships, divided country, lack of democracy etc) but they still weren’t role models. They vented their frustration in violent ways.
Considering the large number of student activists and violent student activists who became teachers. Its really not that surprising that Korea has so many protests and riots compared to other countries. Its literally in the education system. Its taught and reinforced intentionally and unintentionally. Also considering the amount of anger they had(hence the reason why many of them became activists and employed violence) its really not surprising that they advocate corporal punishment to get the job done. They did it to the police and government when they were young. Why not on kids?
Teachers should not incorporate corporal punishment. You beat a dog enough times and it will bite back(not implying that Koreans are dogs). Its a never ending cycle.
Teacher beats student who beats another student who beats another student who later grows up to become a teacher who beats up students etc. To sum it up: anger and violence is being transferred from one person to the next. And its not going to change any time soon. The next generation of teachers are no different from the old coots of yesteryear. They are the ones who thrived under such a draconian system. They are the ones most identical to the archetypal authoritarian Korean teacher. The next generation will merely continue their(teachers) harsh legacy because its the system they prospered under to become teachers. And it is these new teachers who will create another lost generation of students.
And thus the cycle repeats itself. I personally believe the single most altruistic thing Koreans can do for themselves and their country is to reform their education system. Get rid of corporal punishment, dinosaur teachers and stressful Hagwons that cause kids to snap and youre looking at a bright future. Add creativity, independent thought and freedom to the mix and youre looking at a very bright future.
Am I the only person who feels like he’s living in a different Korea from the one described above? Some of my students play-fight all the bloody time, but real fighting is extremely rare. The same goes for kids at the orphanage where I do volunteer work. Yesterday I saw a girl whack a boy across the back of the neck about as hard as a 90-pound, 14-year-old girl can. He seemed to think it was funny. These are supposedly the most disadvantaged kids in Korea and yet they seem to be well taken care of and get along like family.
In over three years at my school the only incident of a student actually hurting another student that I’ve heard of involved a student with mental health problems who was being teased. Yes, from time to time some troublemakers get a few swats with a stick and on rare occasion a teacher may cross the line from punishment to abuse; but I’ve never seen this translate to students invlicting violence on each other. I’ve never once felt any sort of intimidation from teenagers in this country and while they can certainly be obnoxious at times they seem about the most harmless teenagers you could possibly find in the world.
The story and comments above make me feel like some parts of Korea sure must be a lot different and / or I’ve just been extremely lucky.
I don’t think it has much to do with the radical teachers who were formerly student radicals. I think it goes to the bone. Koreans are some of the most hot tempered , violence-prone people I’ve ever been around.
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