The more students feel their human rights are respected, the more they respect teachers’ rights

Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon and Sejong City Superintendent Choi Kyo-jin hold a press conference to announce the position statement of the eight city superintendents against the abolition of the Seoul Student Rights Ordinance at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on Dec. 19, last year. Lee Jun-heon

A study found that the greater the degree of respect for students' human rights in regions with an ordinance on their human rights, the higher the level of respect for teachers. It also found that students who perceive the utility of the ordinance are more likely to respect teachers.

These findings contradict the recent push to abolish the ordinances on students' human rights by the government and local councils, which assumed that “students’ rights are at odds with teachers’ rights.”

According to a paper titled “The moderating effect of utility of ordinances on students’ human rights in the relationship between the active achievement of student human rights and the respect for professional teachers’ rights,” published in the journal "Legislation and Policy" late last month by the National Assembly Research Service, students’ rights and teachers’ rights are complementary, not opposed. The author, Kim Beom-joo, an investigator at the National Assembly Research Service, empirically analyzed the connection using the result of a survey conducted on 19,061 elementary, middle and high school students in Gyeonggi Province, which has put the ordinance on students’ human rights in place.

The paper assumed that the average value of responses to nine questions, including whether schools reflect student opinions when making or revising rules, whether students have the right to participate in the process of solving problems related to them, and whether education and counseling are being conducted in consideration of the diversity of students, as an independent variable of "active achievement of students’ human rights,” and the degree of respect for teachers' intellectual and technical authority as a dependent variable of "respect for professional teachers’ rights." It analyzed the utility of the ordinances using it as a moderating variable.

The results of the analysis showed that the degree of students' respect for teachers’ rights tends to increase as their human rights are realized in the regions where the ordinance is put in place. “When the active achievement of student rights increases by a certain level (one unit) in a region with an ordinance on students’ human rights, the degree of respect for professional teachers’ rights is expected to increase by about 13.7 percent,” Kim said. It suggests that the more students feel that their human rights are respected at school, the more they tend to recognize the authority of their teachers.

Kim also analyzed differences in the level of respect for teachers' rights according to the utility of the ordinance perceived by students. Kim said, "The group of students with high utility of students’ human rights ordinance is expected to have about 22.1 percent higher respect for professional teachers’ rights than those who do not." This means that students who feel that the ordinance guarantees their human rights are also more likely to respect teachers’ rights. All of the ordinances currently in effect stipulate in their general rules that it is the responsibility of students to respect the human rights of others, including teachers and other staff at school.

Kim also analyzed that even among students who perceived a relatively lower utility of the ordinance, the more students feel that their human rights are respected, “the degree of their respect for professional teachers’ rights increases by about 6.2 percent.”

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.