"Punish Me"

Seoul's public schools have banned corporal punishment! Oh the horrors! How will we ever control the students!? They'll just behave badly all the time knowing the teachers won't hit them!

From the Joongang Daily:

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Corporal punishment ban goes into effect in Seoul

 

Teachers complain they aren’t ready for the changes
November 01, 2010

Corporal punishment is now banned in all schools in Seoul under revised regulation devised by liberal Seoul education chief Kwak No-hyun.

But teachers complained that they are not ready for the changes and many are still confused by the new system.

“Regardless of whether the schools are private or public schools, more than 99 percent of schools set up their own regulations banning teachers from using corporal punishment for educational purposes,” said an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education yesterday.

The revised regulation takes effect today and all forms of corporal punishment will be banned. While students and civic organizations that advocate for students’ human rights welcome the changes, some teachers are worried.

Citing a lack of alternative means to control student misbehavior, many teachers argued they can’t handle situations without corporal punishment, given that corporal punishment has been widely considered an effective method of supervising and teaching students in Korean schools until recently.

If teachers are caught bypassing the regulations, the education office will issue a warning or take disciplinary measures.

Because many teachers complained that they had no positive alternative measures to replace corporal punishment, the Seoul education office unveiled alternative punishment guidelines on Sept. 9.

According to the guidelines, teachers can isolate students for misbehavior in an “introspection room” and set up a meeting with students’ parents to discuss their children’s behaviors.

Teachers affiliated with the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association released a statement immediately after the Seoul education office’s Sept. 9 guideline announcement and said the education office’s guidelines are too idealistic.

“The schools lack the number of teachers who can manage ‘introspection rooms’ and offer counseling to misbehaving students,” said Kim Dong-seok, the union’s spokesman. “It’s also unclear whether teachers’ meetings with parents will work because there are no measures that can force parents to come to school if they reject the teacher’s request for a meeting.”

Members of the teachers’ union urged Ministry of Education officials last Thursday to come up with national guidelines on corporal punishment.

The Seoul education office said it will recruit additional teachers for introspection rooms by March of next year.

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This article is interesting because teachers are respected and are almost seen as a second parent to a child. Hitting them is/was a daily occurrence, and the students never complained about it. In fact, they once told me "it's a good thing we get hit, if we didn't we would be very bad."

The day the ban came into effect, my students were behaving badly and some of the teachers were obviously frustrated with the new rule. I don't think they've had classroom management courses to take, as the majority of them go straight to "the stick" for punishments. Some make them sit or stand in painful positions for a long time.

I never hit my students, but I do make them stand in the back of the classroom or in the hallways removed from class if they are misbehaving. Sending them to the principal is never done - as the principals are more administrators than they are disciplinarians. Modern detention (i.e., sitting in a room after school) is not common. More common is forced labor cleaning classrooms, hallways, school grounds, or for more serious situations; writing apology letters and confessions to their parents and teachers.

I think it would be fun to end this post with a quote from my co-teacher. I asked her what she thought of the new regulation, and she said: "I don't care about the new law, I will still hit them."