Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jungle]

I read somewhere that children are routinely hit, strapped etc as punishment. Is this true? What other things are done for punishment?
Just so I know . . .

[Mody Ba]

They are ften very kind,goodhearted people.Unfortunately,there is also a streak of cruelty.it is my understanding that corporal punishment is banned in public schools.Nevertheless,I have seen it.Not strapping(although that might take palce out of the view of the foeriegn teacher).I have seen students slapped hard with the open hand.Also,I have seen students pinched ubtil they cried.Also,they sometimes punish by humiliation,such as making the pffendingstudent kneel in the hallway or by a teacher's desk.Not nice stuff.Some people will try to defend it though,saying"Well,itis a different culture"Yeah.Right.

[bignate]

I have seen all those things,

I had one boy in my class who was very active, in fact over active. He couldn't sit still, never paid attention, and had real difficultly completing assignments, etc. He had been there forever, and still did not advance at the rate of the other's. I suggested to the other teacher (Korean) that he could have a learning disability (ADD, ADHD, etc - I am not a child psychologist, but man this kid was everywhere all at the same time) and that he might need to be assessed. His mom didn't buy it and ignored me and told us to hit him until he cried, and that is the only way to make him understand. I told her that I don't believe in that sort of punishment, and she seemed shocked (like an I pay the money here look). She said that I was the teacher and that I should do it the Korean way. I continued to disagree, but the Korean teacher smoothed it out. I don't know after that I just can't see how some kids (and parents) will ever learn.

Also I have seen:
- Female Korean teachers pull down a kids pants and poke him in the butt with a pencil (not hard, but man)

- Korean teacher's pretending to phone the cops on a kid who was misbehaving (you should have seen the tears then)

- Holding the garbage can above their heads while standing in the corner (very humiliating, since they call them the garbage (wo)men).

- A lot of yelling and screaming.

- Oh and one of the most bizzare things they will have two kids who have been fighting or arguing come to the middle of the class and bak-chug-gee(head-butt) one another, and if there is only one they will make them bak-chug-gee the floor!

Korea sure is strange!

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

I have been *told*:

hit the child on the bum hard. If they still do, take a ruler, and hit their hand.

My Wonjangnim did as such to a middle school girl last week.

Holly!

I don't know who was in more pain, the girl, or me.

And THEN, the girl said "No. I know the teacher cares for me. It is ok".

[Zyzyfer]

There's a kind of parental responsibility passed on to the teachers at public schools; they were initially expected to punish students on-site for misbehavior.

This is changing rapidly, however. I can't even get angry at a student, no matter what they do. I can barely discipline them, and I have to, at all times, be nice. I had a talk with one of my coteachers about this stuff, and he said that parents often call the school and complain(hakwon blues), asking why their son/daughter was punished.

Maybe it's because your kid needs to behave?...

Ah well...I do enjoy the job more when I don't punish anyone, even though it's an exercise in futility when it comes to studying.

[flutieflakes]

in the public system there is a law saying no hitting anywhere but on the leg between the ass and knee...however, this rarely applies....ive seen everything from cut off hockey sticks, pool cues and the sharp edge of the ruler to the hand repeatedly....one kids hand was so bruised he couldnt hold his pencil...ond boy's thigh was a deep purple from the music's teacher's beatings...one teacher hit a kid in the back of the head about 25 times with one of those bamboo type switches....still one of the most difficult things i have to deal with is the beating issue....that cute little korean teacher all of a sudden going off certainly makes me see things a little different...oh yeah, the same applies to girls as well as boys in my area....

[Mody Ba]

Yes.Whatt he says(and the other posters,too) is absolutely treu.At a school I taught at formerly,a lot of kids were always"falling down the stairs".Yeah,right.And just today,at my present school,they had some kid out kneeling in the mud in the hot sun on the playyground.

[mokpochica]

It is true that students are hit often, usually on the hand with the 'love stick' or on the calves. More often than this though, I see students having to hold books over their heads for 10 minutes or kneeling on their knees/resting on their elbows for 10 minutes or so. I teach in a private middle school and I sometimes have kids do squats or push-ups if they aren't listening or staying on task, and I've seen other teachers do this as well.

It is a different country and culture...and many of our home countries had corporal punishment until recently. (I'm 26 and I remember kids getting spanked with the paddle during elementary school in the US.) Things are changing here though, although slowly because a lot of parents support their kids getting hit and many kids just accept it as an expression of caring about them and their education. Many parents hit their kids as well to get them to study harder. I often think that if you tried to hit a kid at home for the same reason they would just become belligerent, but here in Korea it's met with a different reaction.

[crazylemongirl]

Sorry,
But when it comes to basic human rights I'm a cultural imperalist.. Hitting kids is wrong.

CLg

[Mody Ba]

Hitting them is wrong.Mistreating people(kids,adults,is wrong).Cruelty,both to human beings and animals is wrong.There is really no excuse"cultural"or otherwise for cruelty.

[posco's trumpet]

[Canadian Teacher]

[HamuHamu]

Nothing that I have ever seen at my own hagwan, but I teach a middle school class at the "conversation" level (whatever that is...) and on more than one occasion different students in the class have told me that they were hit by their teacher or their parents for not doing their homework, or getting a low mark on a test.

The worst story was one student who told me that he was mad at his friend that day, because his friend showed up to school 3 minutes late and then to top it off, didn't have his homework done, so the ENTIRE CLASS got "beat up" by the teacher. All of the kids said that this was common - at least, to get hit by the teacher, not necessarily all of the class to suffer for one student's mistake.

Also, these same students have told me on many occasions that their parents hit them any time they do anything bad - low test mark, bad phone report from the teacher, etc. Maybe I just have a remarkably bad group of students, but no matter what the situation I don't believe you should ever hit your students or your children. No matter what the circumstances.

Not too long ago, a friend and I were on the subway, not very crowded, but almost a full car. There's a mother, father, and boy about 7 years old. 7 year old says something a little whiney but was not making a scene or a fuss or anything, likely something along the lines of "I don't wanna go there..." and the father gestures to the mother, who moves the kid a few feet away from the father, and she stands back. Before we realized what was going to happen, he gave his best TaeKwon Do kick and literally BOOTED his son so hard that it made an incredibly loud thump sound. "THWACK!" Kid flew about 8 inches in the air and about 3 feet forward.

I was so shocked that my first reaction was a shout of "Holy F**** SH****!!!" The people on the subway stared at ME with nasty looks, not one of them said a word to the man. I know they generally don't bud into other people's business here (Unless you are a foreigner, and then they can snoop about our lives as much as they want....but that's another thread), but I could not BELIEVE what I saw. The mother said nothing.

That's the kind of stuff that makes me want out of this country. I know that Koreans can be the friendliest people lots of the time, but a society that condones that kind of behaviour is just not a place that I can respect.

I know that Confucianism's 7 "deadly sins" for a woman include excessive chatter, but what in the Confucian belief system states that you shoudl beat the snot out of your children to try to get them to change their behaviour????

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

HamuHamu wrote:

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Koreans are Koreans. It is like talking to a brick wall.