School trip debate highlights pressures of dealing with parental complaints

President Lee Jae Myung speaks during the 21st Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on May 12. Korea Times photo by Wang Tae-suk

“You shouldn’t throw out the whole fermentation jar just because you’re afraid it might attract maggots.”

The Korean proverb, similar in meaning to the Western idiom “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” was invoked by President Lee Jae Myung during a Cabinet meeting as he addressed the decline of field trips and multiday school trips across Korea.

His comments added to a growing public debate over why schools and teachers are scaling back educational trips, with many educators citing the burden of parental complaints — sometimes over the smallest details.

Lee’s comments helped fuel discussion about restoring a wider range of school trips. He suggested subsidizing the cost of additional safety personnel if teachers feel too burdened by the responsibility of supervising students. The Ministry of Education has said it is coordinating with the Ministry of Justice on legal revisions that would strengthen protections for teachers when safety accidents occur.

But teachers on the front lines remain concerned. They say stronger safety measures and reduced legal burdens are important, but not enough. Unless excessive — and in some cases seemingly malicious — parental complaints and violations of teachers’ authority are also addressed, educators say they will remain demoralized and reluctant to organize such trips.

Students on a school trip take photos and make memories at Gyeongpo Beach in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, on April 30. Yonhap

Teachers back school trips but warn of added administrative burden

When the Hankook Ilbo interviewed parents and teachers Tuesday, both groups appeared to broadly agree that field trips and school trips remain necessary.

“School trips are a valuable opportunity for students who otherwise spend their days in classrooms to take part in outdoor activities and build real-world experience,” said Choi Yi-jin, 42, whose child is in the second year of middle school.

Kim, whose child is in the first year of high school, agreed.

“As the president said, it doesn’t make sense to eliminate school trips just because safety accidents are possible,” Kim said.

Teachers also pointed to the educational value of such trips. For children from lower-income households, school trips are often the only travel experiences they have during adolescence, one high school teacher said.

“Such trips must resume, even though adequate measures have not taken place,” the teacher said.

Park Nam-gi, an emeritus professor of education at Gwangju National University of Education, offered a similar view.

“For children today, who are more connected to online environments than ever before, real-life experiences through school trips have become even more important,” Park said.

But it is easier said than done.

Manuals on field trips and school trips issued by district education offices often run more than 200 pages. Teachers also worry that while sending safety personnel on educational trips could help, as the president suggested, it would bring additional administrative work — from selecting and contracting such personnel to conducting background checks for sex crime records and providing pretrip training.

Those tasks, teachers say, would still fall on educators on the front lines. Even predeparture breath alcohol checks for bus drivers and sanitation checks at booked venues are treated as teachers’ responsibilities.

“Even planning routes for those safety personnel falls to teachers,” said Jo, a 53-year-old high school teacher in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. “And if they make a mistake, the complaints will inevitably be directed at teachers again.”

Education Minister Choi Kyo-jin speaks during a meeting with education community members on safe field trips at TP Tower in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on May 7. Yonhap

Freer field education depends on curbing malicious complaints

Instead, educators say the priority should be addressing vexatious and frivolous complaints from parents.

Safety accidents can be prevented with additional safety personnel and funding, they say. What is missing are institutional measures and stronger protections against unjust, far-reaching demands from parents. If not resolved, they say more open and flexible field trips that give students room to explore will remain impossible.

“Once, a parent called the principal directly because her child said the food was not good,” Jo said. “The principal rushed to Gangwon Province, inspected the menus and returned to Suwon the same day.”

Another teacher in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, recalled receiving a complaint from a parent because her child could not access Wi-Fi in the room during a school trip.

“I personally checked that the Wi-Fi was working before reporting back to the parent,” the teacher said.

A high school teacher in Incheon said teachers also face the threat of lawsuits if they fail to handle complaints with extreme caution.

“Parents threatening to sue when their complaints are not accepted has become almost routine,” the teacher said.

Earlier this month, a YouTube video went viral, drawing 11 million views, after the head of a teachers’ union listed complaints he had received during a conference hosted by the education ministry. Among the examples were: “Why take my child so far away if the trip makes them carsick?” and “Why does my child appear in only five out of 200 photos?”

The education community is calling for practical measures to protect teachers.

At a news conference Tuesday, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations urged the government to introduce stronger protections related to field trips and other hands-on learning programs, including legal immunity from civil and criminal liability, reduced administrative burdens and safeguards against parental complaints.

As broader measures to protect teachers’ authority, the group also called for serious violations of teachers’ rights, including assault, injury and sexual violence, to be recorded in students’ school records. It also proposed a state-backed system to cover lawsuits involving teachers’ rights and a mandatory countersuit system against malicious complaints.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.