Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Junior]

[JustLookingAround]

[edwardcatflap]

[Geumchondave]

Junior - you are wrong - not to be disrespectful but you are straight up factually incorrect.
Please read some actual historical research on youth and the media - look back to things written in Victorian england about the rise of hooliganism and how teenagers should be given the death penalty more often to increase moral values amongst the uncontrollable young generation.
This had a massive affect on crime statistics and lead to a huge increase in the number of under 25s being given the death penalty for the same offences that in over 25s where treated more leniently - crime statistics available if you actually look

And it is not the left calling for an end to corporal punishment it is people who actual study child behavior - do the research learn the facts before you bang on the same tired part lines about the young uns needing a good thrashing - get out of the armchair put the down the daily mail and actually learn some good teaching practice, learn the child psychology involved and maybe you would understand the role of corporal punishment.

Equally do not hold a secular society like Korea as an example of good behavior and then say our shedding of bronze age superstitions is what makes the more enlightened generation behave badly.

[edwardcatflap]

Junior was talking about a change in values and did not, as far as I'm aware, say anything about giving people a good thrashing or stringing them up or any of the other cliches the Left always trot out when someone dares to question their moral high ground. You also threw in the Daily Mail again, which is the other, not so subtle way of rubbishing any argument against the PC dogma. So what has studying child behaviour and paying child psychology consultants tax payers' money to sit around observing kids done for discipline in class rooms lately. Improved it?

[Geumchondave]

It has improved it in my classroom, but that of course is because I read it.

Changing values where mentioned - but as I said those values do not relate to behavior - I fail to see how religious values can be linked to good behavior and then Korea highlighted as a good example.

Well no, Junior wasn't suggesting stringing them up and beating them, Junior was simply advocating beating in a general easy going casual way your quite correct - however until someone actually shows me a bad student being beaten and then suddenly becoming a good student I will keep to the actual facts as opposed to going off on ill informed rants about the stat of the UK and keep things focused on the issue at hand

[b-class rambler]

As someone who taught in the UK state school system, both as a regular job and as a supply teacher, I can confirm that all of what this guy wrote in the article does happen and is completely believable.

HOWEVER.....a few other points that should not be overlooked.

1. The article is obviously just focussing on the very worst examples and by the writer's very own admission, he was deliberately seeking out what he thought would be the worst schools in the worst areas in the hope of finding some "action".

2. Professionally, he occasionally sounds like someone who should never have stepped in front of a class in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those "doesn't do it my class" teachers who claims never to have any discipline problems and I know people making such boasts are not being very honest. However, this guy appears to have laughable classroom management skills for someone working as a supply teacher with secondary level kids in a state school.

3. Considering he spent a whole year deliberately looking for the worst examples, he doesn't actually have that many. And also, almost a third of his article is in fact about kids behaving excellently in the schools he went to.

That said, I don't particularly wish to go back to teaching in UK schools. Classroom management-wise, there are things I could take for granted back there that I miss when I'm in a Korean school - like a greater expectation (although not always reality) of silence and attention when necessary - but on the whole I find kids here much, much easier to deal with. But I'm not sure it's necessarily corporal punishment making much (if indeed any) difference. I never had a problem with corporal punishment used appropriately as a corrective technique, but I don't think either that removing it here will be as disastrous as some predict nor that reinstating it in the UK would stop some of the crap described in the article.

I do think Seoul has been over hasty in the way they've handled it though. When banning CP, you have to make sure that something else is already in its place. A lot of Korean teachers are now feeling that they only had one sanction they could use, it's been taken away and now they have nothing. I sympathise with those frustrations.

[Snowflake]

[Junior]

[almightyze]

[Stan Rogers]

Are there no prisons?

Are there no work houses?

[silkhighway]

Let's step back a bit and ask a couple questions here.

Is it ok for parents to use corporal punishment with their kids, but not teachers? Or vice versa? If a parent is mortified that a teacher would be using corporal punishment with their children, are they right? How about the children themselves, do their opinions count?

Now take a look at the kids in your classes. Which ones are more likely to have corporal punishment at home? Is it the children who are well behaved and doing well in their studies? Is it the kids who are not well behaved and not doing well? Is there any correlation at all?

[JustLookingAround]

[jcm87]

For everyone who claims that corporal punishment doesn't work, including those who cite empirical evidence, don't you think it's something completely dependent upon the culture and situation? I'm sure there are many places where 'corporal punishment' (however you define that) wouldn't work, and others where it would (dependent on the culture, economic status, history, and other factors of the given population). I think it's probably cultural.

I don't agree with westerners telling Koreans how to run their classrooms and citing examples of their own success without the use of corporal punishment. We come from a completely different culture and educational system, so I don't think our experience is so applicable (not to mention we are certainly treated differnently by the students because of our nationality, not to mention our role as ESL teachers is much different than the Korean national teachers). We're not as qualified as they are to make judgments on what type of punishment should be allowed in their schools.

B-class rambler made a very good point in that in Korea's case, it is something being taken away, not introduced. So if teachers have relied on it in the past, this could make it much harder for them to keep order in the classrooms. But just because it works in Korea doesn't necessarily mean it should be instituted in our countries.

And why do we equate corporal punishment with abuse and kicking the s**t out of a kid (btw Geumchondave, I don't think Junior equated corporal punishment with death penalty, at least I don't)? I personally don't think corporal punishment should be used frequently, at least not as much as Koreans used it as recently as several years ago. That being said, when a kid is way out of line, I think he should be taught a lesson by the adult, whether it's a teacher or parent. If you are disrespectful in the real world, you get your ass kicked. Kids should be aware of this, and if they are far too disrespectful, a smack in the face sometimes is necessary.

This would happen in literally any culture in history up to a few decades ago, where we (in a few western countries) developed the idea that children should never be hit. I don't buy into the notion of the "right" of a child to never be hit, no matter what its behavior is. This has created the historically unprecedented environment where the child knows that no matter what it does, no matter how disrespectful it gets, it can never receive any physical harm. I'm not sure if this is ideal and something we should force onto other countries.

As for the discussion of values, of course I'm inclined to be averse to right wing talk about values (in the US, most of this comes from evangelical Christians with a f*cked up collection of contradictory religious, social, political, and economic views), but sometimes I do sympathize with their complaints. I don't buy the liberal notion either that 'cultural decline existed in every time period' since the culture of every time and place is unique, nor that the concept of cultural decline cannot possibly exist or is never worth discussing. I do believe in the possiblity of 'cultural decline,' whatever it is, and I think it's worth discussing.

I also think that we have witnessed an amazing cultural change over the past few decades for a variety of reasons, at the very least due to the economic changes we've undergone in this era (imo culture always reflects economics, but that's just my opinion)...so I don't think you can dismiss 'cultural decline' as something that always existed or something that doesn't exist at all. Whether or not this cultural change is good or bad or neither, and whether or not the state can or should do something about it is an entirely different discussion, and one that I think liberals are probably more correct and realistic about.

[RMNC]

Because no one in the 1950's had illicit children and no one in the 1900's ever committed crimes as an adult.