Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Teacher suicide exposes parent bullying in S Korea
South Korea suffers from the world’s lowest fertility rate. The number
of newborns went down from around 500,000 two decades ago to about half in the
last few years. Just like China, many parents have just one child, so they have
extremely high expectations for their future. Also, South Korean society has a
narrow definition of success of getting good grades and going to a good
university, which puts a lot of pressure both on their children and teachers. In
fact, many parents put their children into extra-curricular school hours before
and after school every day to study. Such parents also put high pressure on
school teachers as to how their children are treated. When their beloved child
is disciplined for misconduct, they complain to the teacher excessively to the
point where teachers feel too harassed and depressed to keep doing their jobs. In
July, a 23-year-old primary teacher took her own life because of the pressure
she had gotten from the parents of her students. The incident sparked huge
protests and strikes by tens of thousands of teachers who demanded better
protection at work. What is education at school and what are the roles of
teachers?
Read the article and learn about how teachers are bullied by parents in
South Korea.
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