A female student took her own life after receiving corporal punishment from her teacher.
According to police in Gwangju, the 13-year-old middle school student hanged herself and was found last Thursday in her room by family members.
The unidentified girl was ordered by her teacher to repeatedly crouch down and stand up as punishment because she did not read some assigned books.
Police say the teacher claimed that the level of discipline was far from harsh and there was no corporal punishment harsh enough to drive her into committing suicide.
The article goes on to reference the Gwangju student who killed himself earlier this month after getting hit 110 times across the feet for skipping study hall. But, while I have no doubt that a teacher is willing and able to give out excessive corporal punishment---we've all seen it ourselves---it's probably too hasty to lay the blame solely on the beating, seeing how, well, how regularly people chose suicide.
2 comments:
"the teacher claimed that the level of discipline was far from harsh and there was no corporal punishment harsh enough to drive her into committing suicide"
Well, of course the teacher will claim this, whether guilty or not.
As for the corporal punishment not being serious enough to drive someone to suicide... that may be true of THIS instance of C.P. However, we have no idea how many times in the past this teacher has punished this particular student. Serious punishment or not, this may have been the last straw as far as the student felt and decided not to take it anymore.
Of course, the student might just be unhinged and it had nothing at all to do with the teacher or the C.P.
Learned hopelessness. It doesn't matter how sever the punishment, if one has been exposed to it long enough, either personally or vicariously, one learns that it is hopeless to try to do anything about it. Once learned hopelessness occurs, anything can be the trigger for the staw that breaks the camel's back.
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