Friday, September 11, 2009
Student attacks gym teacher in Uijeongbu.
Some nasty news out of Gyeonggi-do's Uijeongbu, where a female middle school student beat up a female gym teacher. The first-grader---corresponds to a seventh-grader in the US---was being disruptive and asked to leave gym class, and responded by grabbing the 55-year-old teacher's hair and kicking her. The teacher received treatment at a local hospital.
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I wonder if the tide is turning.
We have, particularly since the 1997-98 economic crisis, been exposed to so many "teachers behaving badly" stories in the media. But lately there have been some notable "bad students" stories.
I wonder if it just reached critical mass that has been causing these to pop up or if this is a conscious decision by some in the media to focus on this.
Today in the teachers office a female teacher was hitting the boys--smacks on the back with what looked like a big plastic ruler ...
Leaving the office I said to my co-teacher that I wondered if Korean teachers have considered that with the changing culture here that in the near future a teacher may be murdered by a student for corporal punishment . .. she brushed it off, and then brought up Singapore and how police beat people with sticks--I asked her if she'd watched the news and footage of the Mad Cow protests and what the Korean police were doing ...
Yeah.
I heard about this too - a bit shocking, but not that surprising... Take a teenager with some crazy hormones and a mean streak after being called out by the teacher - and possibly other corporal punishment from other teachers (or a past tiff with this one - the story is so short it's hard to say).
I dislike violence - but Korean-on-Korean violence getting some attention is welcome news from the foreigner's perspective - it's what some of us feel threatened with at times...
Accordingn to a Korean-language media report I read yesterday, the teacher grabbed the first-year student by the arm and was dragging her away and telling her to get out. By middle school, the kids are big enough to fight back. I wonder when Korean schools are going to acknowledge this and start training staff in restraining techniques. Had this school been in the US, the teacher would not have touched the girl's arm. If she had refused to leave, administrators trained in restraining techniques would have been called in to remove her forcibly if necessary. I have seen school staff doing this, and they know how to restrain or move a child without leaving marks or injuries.
Defense: She was curious about what it was like to kick her teacher's ass.
But Sonagi, you can't kick a student out of class in Korea. It violates their right to an education (or so many sources have told me).
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