The media bias against foreign teachers
SUNCHEON, South Jeolla Province - We recently read that 12 percent of native speaker English teachers in Ulsan were "expelled" from their jobs. The report said that the teachers were let go because they had "methods ... inappropriate for teaching students in English."
It is certainly the district's or the school's prerogative to hire or fire whomever they please, and there are no doubt some that deserve to go. However, the information and the way it was reported reveal two big problems frequently seen in media coverage of teachers. It is consistent with a trend to portray foreign English teachers in an unfairly negative way, and it begs the question
why Korean teachers' methods are, as a whole,
not under similar scrutiny.
Two of the most glaring problems are in the headline itself: "12 percent of native English teachers dismissed at schools in Ulsan."
The teachers were not "dismissed" or "expelled," which means they were fired in the middle of their contracts,
but were simply not offered another contract after their current ones had expired. The article looked at the 12 percent of teachers who, for various reasons, were not retained, even though it would have been just as easy to write an article titled "88 percent of native English teachers doing just fine."
Some of the reasons for non-retainment were dubious as well. "Some (teachers) had to visit hospital too often for weight problems and some refused to teach after school," the article reported.
Schools should not be discriminating based on appearance, and because these after-school classes are not mandatory - and often not well-organized - this is not a proper reason for dismissal. Moreover, these evaluations were written by Korean co-teachers who, as many of us know, often do not come to class or to the mandatory teachers' workshops. Because they do not participate, how can they properly evaluate performance?
When judging the performance of native speaker English teachers, one needs to be a little more sophisticated than making generalizations about methodology or culture. And as a teacher myself, I am bothered that as a group our methods are constantly questioned while the frequent stories of Korean teachers behaving badly do not warrant judgments on the group as a whole.
The point is that media focuses on foreign teacher misdeeds, while not offering a proportional level of scrutiny to Korean teachers' misdeeds.
Some recent news stories involving Korean teachers have provided a convenient contrast. In Gwangju, an English teacher at a girls' high school is in some trouble for having her students remove their skirts and kneel before her desk, after performing poorly on an exam.
Also in Gwangju, a student hanged himself after his teacher hit him across the feet 110 times for skipping a study hall. A teacher in Incheon received a two-year suspended jail sentence in April for repeatedly beating two elementary school students.
These stories are mentioned here because they are recent, not because they are unique. We do read similar stories in newspapers, and we can easily find videos of abusive teachers on YouTube. Two of the more appalling ones are of a teacher beating his high school students with a bamboo sword, and of an elementary school teacher repeatedly whipping students with a plastic broom.
Unlike the Ulsan teachers, who will lose their jobs, these teachers receive comparatively light punishments. The man who used a bamboo sword on his students was given a warning.
The teacher who hit his elementary school students with a broom was given a leave of absence during summer vacation. These light punishments show that schools and districts condone this sort of behavior.
Though technically illegal in Korea, corporal punishment happens in every school, every day. Teachers have lamented in the newspapers that it has become much harder to control students now that this particular option is off-limits.
Most famously, Kim Young-hwa, an English teacher in Seoul, wrote a book titled "What's Happening in Sixth Grade Classrooms in Korea." It looks at teachers' authority vis-a-vis the restrictions on corporal punishment. She told the Joongang Ilbo in a December, 2008 interview: "With the ban on physical punishment on students, there is no effective way for teachers to punish kids who break the rules and do as they please."
The merits of corporal punishment can be debated at length, and that netizens, parents, and teachers have spoken out against it shows that in Korea there is not a company line on the issue. But teachers often come to class with weapons, or "love sticks," to keep students in line, and students receive raps on the hands and legs for being late, for scoring low on tests, for talking, and for numerous other offenses large and small.
As we have seen from the especially graphic videos of teacher abuse, sometimes teachers hit students not "for their own good," but because the teachers have lost self-control.
It is not surprising, then, that students are resisting this form of punishment, nor is it surprising that students bully each other with regularity.
These teachers are not punished, are not "dismissed" or "expelled," even though their methodology must be questioned. To put it bluntly, what kind of teacher cannot control a classroom without hitting students? What classroom culture does one create where the prime motivational tools are fear, embarrassment, and pain?
There are bad apples in every bunch. There are native speakers whose lack of experience or training make them ineffective teachers, and there are Korean teachers who should have chosen a different line of work.
When a foreign teacher screws up, it makes big news and leads to calls for vigorous screenings and stricter regulations, as if all of us are dangerous. If parents and citizens are truly concerned about their schools, and are not simply being
xenophobic, they will root out bad Korean teachers with the same vigor with which they seek out bad foreign ones.
Brian Deutsch /In Jeollanam-do
To contact Brian, e-mail
deutsch.brian@gmail.com. To comment on this column, e-mail
mattlamers@heraldm.com. For more of Brian's writings, go to briandeutsch.blogspot.com. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Korea Herald. - Ed.
2009.05.13
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