According to police in Seoul, a complaint was filed that the 20-something teacher at a cram school hit the 15-year-old boy in the face with his clenched fist several times around 9:40 p.m. March 13. The student suffered fractures to his maxillary and orbital bones.
The boy's father claimed that the boy was standing outside a classroom as punishment for not solving a math question, and that the instructor, presumably displeased with his chewing gum, punched him.
``My son had to undergo surgery, having 16 metal screws put into his face. But the hagwon did not pay even the surgery fee, saying it does not have any money. I'd like to let people know how corporal punishment is rampant at private institutes,'' the father said.
A director of the hagwon said that the teacher hit the boy only once and that he did so because while he was scolding the student for not taking the punishment seriously, the boy grabbed him by the collar.
``We fired the teacher. There may be misunderstanding about the money, as we proposed to the father that we pay the whole cost of treatment and tuition until the student enters college,'' he said.
Hmm, curious if the police have anything to say about it. Another case of a Korean teacher behaving badly, yet no one is questioning the whole group's ethical qualifications the way they're doing native speaker English teachers. Yes, some foreign teachers here are pricks, though the evidence suggests that perhaps schools and academies have bigger problems on their hands than just ignorant white people.
4 comments:
The hogwons really need to be winnowed. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 forced some of the worst ones to close. Hopefully, the present financial crisis will have a similar effect.
Wow.
"corporal punishment"? Sorry Dad, that is a vicious beating and where I come from it would be called "assault causing bodily harm" and the lucky winner would be looking at a ten year jolt.
I went to grammer school in korea
and I remember half of the class getting hit on the bottom of our foot because we received %85 or lower on our test score. I just remember being really frightened and feeling like an inferior citizen at age 10..not the best way to encourage your students to behave the way you want them to behave.
yeah its true it's getting harder and harder to control teens these days, but all the more reasons why we need better qualifying teachers.
I've had some bad teachers in Korea and had non abusive yet worst teachers here in the US. but thankfully there were some amazing ones as well..lets hope that we continue to get more of those instead of psycho abusive ones.
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