Plan on school for bullies draws fire

By Na Jeong-ju

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) is considering setting up a school for troublemakers as part of countermeasures against violence at schools.

“The concept of the proposed school is to provide specialized education to students who are caught bullying their peers,” an SMOE official said. “It’s one of the various ideas that have been raised by teachers to counter rampant school violence. It’s an institute for extremely troubled and unruly students.”

The office is also considering transferring violent pupils to other schools regardless of their parents’ wishes. Currently, schools can transfer such students only after consent from their parents.

The forceful transfer is a desperate bid to protect victims and change the atmosphere at schools where violence is prevalent.

The office has formed a task force on school brutality following a series of suicides by middle school students because they were bullied.

According to a survey by the Korean Federation of Teachers Associations, an estimated 300,000 students are being bullied by classmates at the country’s elementary, middle and high schools.

SMOE’s task force held a meeting Thursday to discuss the effectiveness of such measures. It will announce an official set of resolutions to fight bullying after gathering opinions from the police, government agencies and teachers, the official said.

The idea of establishing a school for bullies is drawing criticism from educational and human rights experts, who say such an institution echoes re-education camps for gangsters and criminals operated by the Chun Doo-hwan government in the 1980s.

Experts say this can’t be the fundamental answer.

“In the past, some schools introduced similar programs to properly educate students who misbehaved to an extreme but they were not effective.

Attending such a school could make the students feel like criminals,” said Bae Ju-mi from the Korea Youth Counseling Institute.

The government is now working with SMOE and other regional educational offices to find a solution.

The education ministry recently set up a special advisory committee to deal with the problem.

The police have also launched a special squad called “school police” to prevent violence at schools.

The special team will be dispatched to elementary and middle schools in Seoul to help victims of bullying and offenders and collect intelligence on organized student gangs.

Police also plan to put in place counselors who can help victims around the clock.