This is a letter that a Canadian friend of mine wrote about her experience with violence in Korea. I thought it says all that needs to be said, so I'm putting it on my blog with her permission.
There's a kid in class 304 that I absolutely hate. Last year within my first month of teaching, he almost made me cry, I was so furious with him (I've since learned that there are better ways of getting a student to do what you want then screaming at the top of your lungs. Like pulling them out of the class by their ear.). He was playing on a cellphone and when I caught him he refused to give it to me, then he refused to leave the classroom, and my co teacher at the time, who was completely useless and left at the end of December without saying goodbye to anybody, stood idly by. Finally, using said-grab-ear maneuver, I dragged him down to the principals office.
Since that moment, I've refused to acknowledge this student, despite him saying (in a rude, mocking way) "HELLO!" to me in the hallways whenever we pass, or shooting his hand up in the air and going "Choyo!" which means 'me' in Korean to give an answer or write something on the board if he knows he'll get a candy. There have been so many classes where he'd be sitting at the back of the room, straining his arm for me to choose him while all of the other students were dead to the world, and I would choose another student at random just because. I hated him that much.
Well I decided a couple of weeks ago to let it go and acknowledge him seeing as how it was my last couple of weeks and I didn't really feel quite so justified on being such a hater. I even gave him a candy once for writing something on the board. And then, yesterday happened.
I'm not quite sure on all of the details, but from what I've gathered it went something like this. Their math teacher, a woman in her late-thirties/early-fortie s was trying to quiet down the class, and he would not shut up. So finally she went to the back of the classroom where he sits to admonish him personally. For whatever reason he got up, either punched or slapped her, then began to strangle her before throwing her on the ground and stomping on her. Thankfully, she is ok, and was at work today.
The student was told not to come to school today, but did anyhow and was essentially locked away in the guidance counselors office. They're talking about transferring him to another school (and only if another school accepts him) as the worst punishment he could receive, which is counterintuitive to what I think. He would be lucky to be transferred to another school, it would be getting off easy. He should go to jail.
Anyhow, it's a safe bet that I won't be teaching him anymore. I've always wanted to send him out straight away because he invariably does something disruptive, and nine times out of ten I have him standing at the back of the classroom with his hands over his head (the light end of corporeal punishment here in Korea) within the first five minutes of class. That is, if he's not sleeping by the time there, in that case, I just let sleeping dogs lie.
Mrs Shin, my favorite co teacher, and I were discussing what we would do in that situation, and she honestly had no idea, which I felt really badly about. The teacher who was assaulted probably didn't either. And Mrs Shin is a tiny tiny woman (and a MILF, haha); she's probably about half the size of me. She suggested "Wouldn't you call the police?" and the image in my head was "Excuse me, attacker, while I pull my cellphone out, I just need to make a call." And so I asked her "Well how do you do that if his hands are around your neck?" She gave me a "Mollayo" look (I don't know in Korean) and so I told her that a better option might be to knee him in the balls.
Mrs Shin: What?
Me: KNEE HIM IN THE BALLS.
Mrs Shin: Puzzled expression. So I grab my would-be imaginary attacker and demonstrate the kneeing motion. She got the picture.
I think my coworker Jennifer (one tough lady from Pittsburgh) and I should teach a self-defense class at school. Middle school is a funny age. These kids truly still are kids mentally, but they're beginning to grow into adult bodies. And, to me, it's terrifying that some of the little, and I mean really little Korean women I work with have no idea how to defend themselves. I'm not saying that I could avoid getting hurt but I could at least do enough damage that would hopefully get me into a safer situation. Poke him in the eye, knee him in the balls. Grab, twist, pull.
One thing that I'm stoked to leave behind me in Korea is the daily onslaught of casual violence. Make no mistake, what happened in 304 class yesterday was by no means casual, but routine violence is a daily occurrence in this country. It's funny, all of us foreign teachers said that what happened yesterday was something we would expect at home, something that probably wouldn't even surprised us (the teachers at my school were just shocked.), but never here. But on the flip-side, we see violence everyday here that is completely unthinkable back home. The stuff of everyday public school punishment in Korea is the subject of scandals and lawsuits back home. Let me explain.
Kids hit each other on the regular here, and don't get in trouble for it. I screamed at a first grade boy last week for hitting two girls. I made him stay behind during lunch and reamed him out until he was almost in tears. I don't really know how much he understood but I know he damn well understood "You, Canada, America, hit girls, police, jail. DON'T DO IT AGAIN." Hopefully I shook the fear of death into him and he won't grow up to beat his wife, but that probably won't happen. I walk into classrooms regularly where one kid is wailing on another, boys against boys, girls against girls, boys and girls against each other. I always make the one who I actually see doing the hitting stand at the back of the class with their hands over their head and invariably the students whine like "It was his/her fault!" but I tell them I don't give a shit, you were the one I saw hitting.
And herein lies the rub: that's just the students. Fifties and sixties-style punishments are still the norm in Korea. I must admit, I think it's pretty hilarious to make the students stand with their hands over their heads, because I feel it's harmless and really pretty funny. They get so embarrassed! I don't really feel bad about doing it as my favorite teacher of all time, Mrs Hagger, who I had a bunch of times for English in high school, used to make the boys do it with books. And boy was it ever funny. However, I totally draw the line at actually touching a kid with violent intent myself. I find it barbaric. (And I find it so funny that I now living in a society where it's necessary to make that assertion, where it's not just a gimme.) I was having this discussion earlier today with Miss Che, and she was saying that while she doesn't believe in hitting the students because she "believes in basic human rights" (I loved how directly she put that), but it puts her in a difficult position with regards to the students. Because students quickly learn that you're not going to hit them, they're less well-behaved. They honestly show less respect. So while she would never hit a student, she recognizes that because of this, she needs to work harder at discipline. But this lady can yell: when she talks you listen!
But that's just me. My office has twelve regular teachers and two 'head' teachers. And the two head teachers, who are some of my favorite in the school, regularly dish out the beatings. They have these instruments which are essentially wooden spoons except bigger that they use to whack the students' calves. But the way it's done, it's methodical, and not emotional. And for that reason it doesn't seem barbaric. It's just the way that things are done here. (I can already feel the outraged emails coming!!) Maybe I've just been living here too long. The students come in and they know what to expect, and most of the time it doesn't really hurt them, and I had one teacher explain to me that the reason they use the glorified wooden spoons is because the noise they make when they hit skin is much worse than the pain itself, and so it scares kids enough into falling in line. I've never seen a student seem too bothered by it, and I once actually interviewed a student, who I used to tutor, on this subject and he said that he prefers to be hit as it happens and then it's over, rather than having marks taken off or have to do community service or whatever. There have been times where there has been a whole lineup of kids in the office after school to get a beating, and they all laugh and joke about it. But I did see Mrs Li, one of the head teachers in my office, the other day, rap a girl across the knuckles eight times so that she was crying, and then on top of that made her stand with her hands above her head. That was a bit much.
(On a side note, the other head teacher in my office is Mr Cho, and I totally love this guy. He's one of the kindest people I've ever met. But I watched him actually bite a kid on the shoulder a couple of weeks ago as a joke punishment, and it was one of the cutest/creepiest things I've ever seen. I almost busted a rib laughing.)
So maybe you're all reading this now and thinking, what a fucked up way to think. Corporal punishment is funny? Well, we talk a lot in our culture of desensitization. From the news, from video games, from movies. And when I say the news, I don't just mean the coverage of the war, and the Columbines and the Virginia Techs, but also the rampant violent crime that exists in the everyday in the US. Granted, it does exist in Canada as well, and no one, especially me, is denying that. So this next section is a little difficult to word. Many of us living in North America are desensitized to the violence in the media, but we would still lift a finger if we heard the woman next door getting the shit beaten out of her. In Korea, that is also commonplace. Name me a foreigner who has come over here and not heard screaming in the middle of the night, or at least knows someone closely who has. So while we see it on the news, rarely does it come so close into our personal space that we have the need to do something about it. Flip over to Korea, where it's so commonplace, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't pick up the phone to call the police, as the language barrier prevents it. Maybe I should have learned how to say "The woman next door is getting the shit beaten out of her!" BUT, one thing I have become desensitized to is kids getting whacked with a wooden spoon in my office. It's still jarring every time it happens, but you come to realize, as a foreigner living in a foreign country, that there's nothing you can do to stop it. You can preach about it till you're blue in the face, but in the end, you're only here for a year (two if you're me!) and after that you'll have moved on with your own life and teachers across this wonderful country will continue to beat their kids. And that's not gonna change for a while.
It's such a strange dichotomy that exists in Korea, which goes for this issue and countless others. Violence is used on a regular basis as a means of punishment, and yet when incidences like this happen, it's a massive shock. Going back to Virginia Tech, the teachers at my school were horrified that the murderer was Korean. I had Mrs Shin rush up to me the next morning and was like "Did you talk to your parents?!?!?!" and I was like "Yeah... why?" And she replied "Well, aren't they worried about you? Do they want you to come home?" While I told them that no one in Canada or America, except hillbillies and rednecks, would think anything of Koreans because of this, I'll bet that more than a few Koreans were outraged that the Great Evil America could so corrupt one of their own.
Anyway to sum this up concisely as I'm out of time at work: Violence in the classroom sucks, but Korea is still a safer than America ;-)
