Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sojusucks]

All I can say is wow! Listen to the whole video. You will hear a couple different perspectives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_d6laoxzM

I remember one public school near me. The teacher was punished for beating students because he left marks in a visible spot. However, the teachers told me that if the marks were covered by clothing, then everything is alright. Obviously this excludes foreigners.

Once again in SK, what is said and what is done are not the same ... but will this happen indefinitely is the question?

[TheUrbanMyth]

Indefinitely?

It's being phased out. It's already illegal in Seoul. Teachers are now starting to complain because they say it's too hard to control their classes.

Time will tell but for now the answer seems to be that it will not continue indefinitely but be phased out nation-wide in a few years.

[jvalmer]

[nathanrutledge]

Excellent find. I talked about punishments with my TOEFL winter camp students yesterday - this will make an excellent followup today.

I brought a copy of the Elementary and MS/HS Code of Conduct from my school district back home. Showed it to my coworkers and they were quite impressed.

I'm all for banning corporal punishment, but the current situation is ridiculous. No structure, no accountability. I don't know if this will last, if they'll cave and go back to corporal punishment or if they'll develop some form of holding people to task, or what, but something has to give.

[AsiaESLbound]

Chungnam province is to follow Seoul's new rules come March 1st, but our boss told teachers to stop last September. I noticed the kids were increasingly louder and out of control in our school as the 2nd semester wore on. Korean teachers including my co-teachers were at a loss and said they wished they could use the stick, but were told they can only show it to students which students soon caught on there was no longer any risk for misbehaving and refusing to cooperate. The only hard part about my job was the annoying head splitting screaming and noise of 900 out of control talking kids in an environment lacking structure, accountability, and adequate play areas when they idle time on their hands. They always blasted into our English Zone early screaming and talking, because they loved going, but it made lesson planning and trying to get a quiet moment impossible. Even lunch was impossible to take a peaceful break at school for we didn't have any control nor rules in place despite the numerous times I discussed this issue with my co-teachers. Just no system nor support to replace the recently abolished old ways of running a school so the Korean teachers are working at a loss. They have to go retrain during vacation to update their skills and curriculum to teaching without a stick. I noticed my co-teachers respect me on account of bringing in this approach where they gained new ideas and increased their skills in the process. It's going to be a real zoo come March with a new experimental unproven curriculum and lack of controls unless they really get it together during this vacation (unlikely), but I won't have to endure it as I'm finishing up here shortly.

[pkang0202]

You can't phase our corporal punishment in schools without instituting another system to discourage bad behavior.

How the hell are teachers suppose to control students in the classrooms? Korean schools don't fail students. Detention, suspension, expulsion is extremely rare.


My point is that the Korean education system, in its ENTIRETY, is not ready to have corporal punishment abolished. They should've set up another system like demerits, detentions, suspensions, expulsion, etc... When that system had a few years to work, and the students/teachers/parents understood the workings of that system, THEN corporal punishment should've been abolished.

[Devil's Harvest]

I have the luxury of having my own classroom, and I have been giving my students detention for a couple of years now. I work in Seoul, and have also heard the griping of the Korean teachers over having to put away the "love sticks". They used to think it was weird that I requested certain students be sent to my classroom at the end of the day for their detention, now they are doing it and find that it works better than smacking the kids.

Many Korean children don't have much free time, so making them spend some of their free time in detention is somewhat crushing to them. One student's name on the detention board is usually enough to keep the rest of the class in line.

Class rules, enforced consistently, with worsening punishments for escalating bad behavior is a winning formula for classroom management.

That being said, 90% of my behavior management is based on positive reinforcement. Much less stressful.

[southernman]

Great post very interesting.

I loved the quote from KIm Yeong-Hwa (the author with 30 something years experience in teaching) who used the 'spare the rod spoil the children' line that is often used by proponents of corporal punishment.

While studying deviance in Sociology we had the Catholic Bishop from my city come and speak to one of our classes. He basically said that its an often misquoted passage in the Bible used by child abusers. He also said it is very much taken out of context and that it was never meant to be intrepreted that way.

Here's one idea to use another form of punishment. Use detention, the students will therefore miss their Hagwon class. The parents find out and take away a privilage like playing on the computer for a week. hardly a radical idea and loss of a privilege has worked for good parents for decades.

[Morticae]