Teachers are not subordinate to parents

“Sorry We Couldn’t Protect You” People Line up to Remember the Teacher who Ended Her Own Life: On July 20, fellow teachers and citizens line up in front of an elementary school in Seocho-gu, Seoul to remember the first-grade teacher who took her own life at the school on July 18. Lee Joon-heon

The death of a second-year teacher in her twenties who took her own life in an elementary school in Seocho-gu, Seoul on July 18 has infuriated teachers with “malicious complaints.” Although some allegations that had spread online were confirmed to be false, a considerable number of teachers are still angry because they frequently suffer from ill-intended complaints. On June 30, a sixth grader assaulted his teacher, and now another teacher has ended her own life. The latest incidents have people calling for education authorities to take fundamental measures before it is too late.

After news of the teacher’s suicide was released on July 19, teachers were enraged. Hundreds of funeral wreaths sent by teachers nationwide lined up in front of the elementary school where the teacher died and in front of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education on July 20. Some teachers started a movement by replacing their KakaoTalk profile pictures with an image of black condolence ribbons. It was highly unusual for teachers to engage in collective action over a single incident regardless of their affiliations.

Teachers’ organizations, such as the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, and the Korean Teachers Union held a string of press conferences and memorial services in front of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Thursday.

The cause of the latest incident has yet to be identified. But a number of teachers’ groups conveyed statements from colleagues that the teacher had been distressed because of some parents before her death. There were allegations that after the teacher was put in charge of school violence, she had trouble with some parents, was summoned to the Office of Education, and that the homeroom teacher was replaced following complaints from the parents, but these allegations were all confirmed to be false.

Teachers argued in one voice that the fact that such allegations were raised showed how rampant malicious complaints were in schools. Given the characteristics of a school, the homeroom teacher has to deal with the parents one on one and in this process, teachers are indiscriminately exposed to malicious complaints made by a few people.

In a press conference on Thursday, Jung Sung-kook, a former elementary school teacher who now serves as the president of the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations said, “In a system where the homeroom teacher talks with the parents and also handles complaints, teachers think that it is their duty to solve problems that occur in their class. But there are countless incidents where some parents suddenly change their attitudes if things work against them and threaten or harass the teachers.”

According to the teachers in the classroom, there are many cases where parents who are dissatisfied with the conflictmediation process, such as those involving school violence, abuse the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Child Abuse Crimes and report the teachers for child abuse. According to a survey of 6,243 teachers by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union last September, 92.9% of the respondents said they were afraid of being reported for alleged child abuse in the process of guiding the students. Teachers who have to deal with the problematic behavior of the student or the parents’ excessive complaints all by themselves are leaving the schools. According to People Power Party lawmaker Kwon Eun-hee, a closer look at the teachers who retired from public primary and secondary schools nationwide during the one year starting last March showed that 589 had less than five years’ experience. This was nearly double the number of teachers from the previous year (303). In a survey by the Teachers Union in May, 87% of teachers said they had considered resigning or changing occupations in the past year and 26.6% said they had received psychiatric treatment or therapy for incidents where they had their authority as a teacher violated in the last five years.

On Thursday, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union released a statement and announced, “Among the numerous requests and conflicts inside and outside the school, the emotional and psychological stress that the teachers suffer can be compared to that of nurses in wartime hospital wards.”

Legal measures to protect teachers are lacking compared to the work they have to handle. The Special Act on the Improvement of Teachers’ Status and the Protection of Their Educational Activities states the grounds for schools to suspend a student’s class attendance, change the student’s class, transfer the student to another school, and expel the student when the student interrupts educational activities, but it is not enough to sanction the malicious complaints by parents. When parents verbally or physically abuse a teacher, the metropolitan or provincial office of education with jurisdiction is to report them to an investigative agency, but of the 6,128 cases of teachers’ right infringements reported in 2019-2021, the office of education only filed criminal reports on fourteen cases. The Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations said, “We need to establish a legal and institutional system that holds people rightfully responsible for indiscriminate complaints and child abuse reports,” and added, “The Ministry of Education should quickly make a ministerial notice clearly stipulating instructions, sanctions, and measures that teachers can actually practice in response to infringements of teachers’ rights.”