By Bae Ji-sook, Kang Shin-who
Staff reporters
Is corporal punishment “the stick of love” or another form of child abuse?
The recent revelation of an elementary school teacher having repeatedly beaten his pupils has caused a stir in the education field.
With parents’ voices growing louder against corporal punishment, the authorities are moving to take steps to stem physical punishment at schools.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, headed by liberal Superintendent Kwak No-hyun, seeks to ban corporal punishment at schools but it faces strong resistance from groups of teachers and civic groups.
The education office wants to institute its own regulation to disallow any type of physical punishment on students from the fall semester.
However, a conservative teachers’ group along with some parents’ groups are opposing it.
The Korean Federation of Teacher’s Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ group, called for countermeasures to the change, claiming that teachers would have difficulties controlling students if they are completely stripped of the right to inflict corporal punishment.
The education office’s move follows its investigation into allegations that a 52-year-old teacher, Oh, at an elementary school in the Dongjak District of Seoul repeatedly slapped his students over trifling issues.
The authorities have suspended Oh from his job. They are also investigating whether there was a systematic attempt to cover up the case by the school.
The investigation came after a group of parents denounced Oh and his headmaster late last week by disclosing a video clip showing the “discipline.”
The video taken with a mobile phone started with Oh talking to two of his students in his classroom. When one of them tried to explain about a certain matter, Oh slapped him yelling, “You are lying!” He swore at him and pushed him to the floor and kicked him several times.
When the student cried, Oh said, “You lied to get out of trouble. That’s what has got you here.” Then he pinned the student’s chest and pulled the victim’s arms several times.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought schools were becoming violence-free. But the video proves that the old bad habits still linger in the classrooms and on our children,” one of the parents said. “How wrong can a child be to be beaten like this?”
Other forms of violence reported in his classroom were kicking, grabbing hair and shaking heads back and forth, and ramming heads against the wall. Among the victims was a hemophiliac who needs extra attention because of health concerns. Oh’s attack has also put the child’s life at risk, his mother claimed.
They claimed that the school headmaster tried to settle the case by threatening them. The school principal had reportedly said, “If you keep bringing up the case, it will be of no good for your children.”
The parents will file a petition with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education against both Oh and the headmaster.
“I don’t think any kind of physical violence should be tolerated. It is a clear offence and breach of human rights,” Chang Eun-suk, a spokeswoman for a parents’ group, said.
This is not the first time school teachers have been accused of corporal punishment. With IT development, revelations have been made with video clips and people were able to see how their children were sworn at, beaten and abused by teachers.
The current Education Law subtly acknowledges the need for teachers to use corporal punishment on students “only for educational purposes.” As the city education office is trying to prohibit physical punishment with its own regulations, whether it’s legally binding remains unclear. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has yet to express its official stance on the issue.
In 1996, the court ruled in favor of a teacher who hit his students’ heads with register books twice because they lied about smoking on school grounds.
The authorities send guidelines to teachers that in principle, corporal punishment is prohibited.
But in very restricted cases, caning with a stick less than 60 centimeters long and 2 centimeters in diameter is allowed. The teacher should report the purpose of the discipline to the headmaster.
Teachers claim that abolishing caning will not be easy. “We agree that corporal punishment isn’t the most effective way to educate children. But at the same time, it is a practically inevitable means of discipline since not many students show respect for their teachers these days,” said Ha Seok-kwon, an official at the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association said.