Is Teachers' Day necessary?
By Park Moo-jong
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Three days ago, the country marked its 65th Teachers' Day in a rather odd atmosphere amid a heated debate over whether the special day to honor these people should exist.
The debate started last year with the enforcement of the Law on the Prohibition of Improper Solicitation and Bribery, dubbed the “Kim Young-ran Act,” affecting civil servants, teachers and journalists.
Teachers' Day was designated to encourage teachers' morale and improve their social status by creating a social climate to respect and honor them and their teaching authority and rights.
Teachers' Day is called in Korean “Seuseung ui Nal.” “Seuseung” is an honorific for “seonsaengnim” or teacher, showing the sense of respect for teachers. Since long ago, we Koreans have known how to express our unlimited respect for “seuseung,” by saying, “We don't set foot even on the shadow of our teachers.”
In Korea, Red Cross youth group members initiated the day by visiting their sick retired teachers at hospitals in 1958 on the occasion of the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day on May 8. But since 1965, the date has been May 15, the birthday of Sejong the Great (1397-1450), the fourth king of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), who devised the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, in cooperation with young scholars.
The celebrated day was removed in 1973 in the then government's social purification drive, but was revived in 1983. However, 35 years later in 2018, the special day appears to be standing at the crossroads of being maintained or abolished.
Over the past years, many students' parents have been anxious about how they should treat their children's teachers on the special day and many of them used to offer envelopes of cash and gifts to the teachers as “tokens of gratitude.”
However, the world we are living in has changed. Under the Kim Young-ran Act, professors and teachers should not receive any kind of gifts (from parents of their students). Otherwise, they could be criminally punished.
Students are not even allowed to pin a carnation on the breast of their teacher. Only the representative of students can do so. What a nonsensical and severe measure! It is no wonder that the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission was flooded with a flurry of phone calls asking what is allowed and what is banned.
Few will oppose the idea and efforts to build a clean and transparent society. But I feel sad about our reality that we have to look into law provisions about legal expressions of gratitude to teachers on this special day.
Already, a teacher uploaded a petition for the abolition of Teachers' Day on the presidential office website, lamenting that teachers today are viewed in this society as incompetent people, who only take bribes, while the government is just holding events for form's sake.
Many teachers I have met, including a son of one of my friends, agree that seuseung has long been gone from the education scene. They have no authority to wake up sleeping students during classes. They are not allowed to shake the sleeping students for fear of being accused of “sexual harassment.”
One of them said, “We have nothing to do. I cannot do anything to stop students who destroy school property, curse at me or behave violently because corporal punishment is totally prohibited.”
Students' human rights are precious and they must be respected. But respecting students' human rights at schools where teachers' human rights are missing is meaningless.
Teachers of today lament that they are no longer the subject of respect and gratitude and are simply teaching “machines.” Many of them are now used to having their authority openly challenged at school by students who are raised in an environment in which fewer people hold teachers in high esteem.
The trend of today is that students don't respect their teachers anymore. Teachers merely sell their lessons and students just buy them. The situation is quite different from when teachers began their profession with enthusiasm for teaching.
Nonetheless, there used to be and still are a number of such respectable teachers in this society who carry out their duties silently, being faithful to the philosophy: “Educate all without discrimination and teach according to the abilities of students.”
Overall, Teachers' Day is losing its basic purpose as our teachers have to send emails to parents stating: “We don't receive anything on Teachers' Day.” They have to do so in a desperate bid not to become “criminal suspects.”
The government, schools and parents should get together to reform our educational system and environment first rather than observing Teachers' Day. Instead, it would be better to designate Teachers' Day as a holiday both for teachers and students.
Teachers' Day and the latest educational landscape remind me of a 1967 British film, “To Sir, With Love,” featuring Sidney Poitier who instills in his poverty-stricken and unruly teenagers a belief in themselves and respect for one another at a school in the East End of London.
Teaching should still be one of the most respected professions in this society, despite people increasingly denying the role of teachers. We don't need Teachers' Day like the one this year.
Park Moo-jong is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper founded in 1951 from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter from 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or emjei29@gmail.com