WARNING: This article contains references to mental health and suicide.
In Korea it’s known as “education fever.” It’s the immense pressure that parents put on their children to do well in school. They tell them that they must excel in school to get into the best college to get the best jobs. The pressure used to be applied mostly in high school but it has seeped down into middle school and even elementary.
“The role of parents is probably the biggest factor,” explained former teacher and education expert Insoo Oh, from Ewha Womans University. “Even at the elementary level, students feel pressure to study well due to parental expectations, which are so high. This pressure only increases as they approach middle and high school.”
But the pressure is not only put on the children. It has been applied to teachers too. “If schools fail to meet their expectations, parents will hold teachers responsible,” Professor Oh said. More than 100 teachers had killed themselves over a five-year period, the South Korean Ministry of Education reports. Just over half of those were at the primary-school level.
Professor Oh says there has been a big cultural change as to how teachers are viewed. Once respected and held in high regard, parents see teachers as servants who make much less money then them now.
“With diminished social standing of teachers and hypersensitivity around their child’s education, parents are much more outspoken, sometimes to the point of aggression, if they perceive teachers are not meeting their demands,” he said. “The shift in students and parents from just a decade ago is striking.”
“I am a good person.”
An elementary teacher named “Oh” had been putting on a brave face as she endured bullying from the parents of her young students. “I am a good and strong person,” she wrote in her diary several times last year. A month later, the 26-year-old teacher took her own life.
She died within a year of starting her first full-time teaching job, becoming another awful statistic in the high number of teacher suicides that have plagued South Korea recently. Her father, Oh Jae Geun, blames her school, saying they failed to support the young teacher.
“Recalling these memories is extremely difficult,” he says, as he looks as his daughter’s diary. “The parents don’t like new teachers, so the vice-principal didn’t tell them,” Jae Geun said. But when the parents found out how inexperienced Oh was they started to put enormous pressure on her.
Oh received messages from parents at all hours — even on a break from school. When she tried to break up a fight between two students, the parents said tat she handled the situation poorly. “They kept calling our daughter, saying things like, ‘You’ll never be able to teach again,'” her father said.
But some parents went even further. They said, “We’ll make sure you eat prison food. I’m going to the police station to file a complaint against you right now. You’ll never stand in front of a classroom again.”
Oh’s friends begged her to leave the school, even though the other teachers said what she was experiencing was normal. She chose to continue, with no support from administration. “When my daughter tried to get help, they just told her, ‘Figure it out yourself,'” Jae Geun said.
Oh took her own life in January last year, just 10 months after accepting her first teaching job. The education department concluded in December of last year that the suicide was caused by depression due to bullying from parents. An analysis of her text messages revealed the extent of that bullying, including 1,500 messages.
“I can’t breathe anymore.”
Elementary teacher “L.” suicided in her classroom’s supply closet on July 18 of last year. “My chest feels so tight. I can’t breathe anymore,” she had written in her diary two weeks earlier. The 24-year-old taught in Gangnam-Gu, an exclusive neighborhood in South Korea’s capital, Seoul.
Before this, L. had been subjected to a ton of ongoing complaints from parents who felt their children had been treated unfairly, neglected or emotionally abused. They bombarded the teacher with messages and phone calls, even at night and on weekends.
“With diminished social standing of teachers and hypersensitivity around their child’s education, parents are much more outspoken, sometimes to the point of aggression, if they perceive teachers are not meeting their demands. The change in attitude towards teachers from just a decade ago is striking.”
Parent Complaints to the Police
Parents will often go to the police when they are not satisfied with a teacher. Elementary school teacher “Kim Min Jun” has experienced this kind of abuse from parents. After discovering students had written abusive messages about him on a school notice board, he reported the incident to the Teachers’ Rights Protection Committee. Then the parents of those children retaliated by reporting him to police for alleged abuse.
Some parents accused him of only providing water (not sports drinks) to kids during an athletic event. Others complained that a student was not immediately sent to the nurses’ office after scraping her knee. Jun assumed the allegations were so ridiculous that the police would dismiss them immediately.
“I thought, no, that can’t be it, it must be something else. It didn’t make sense that they would report that as child abuse. But later during the police investigation when they asked me about it, I got angry at the police. I said, ‘What nonsense is this? How is that child abuse?'”
The case was eventually thrown out, but only after prosecutors got involved.
Jun has since moved schools but he is still affected by what happened at his previous school. “I try to do my job and role diligently,” he said. “But now, to avoid doing anything that could potentially be reported as child abuse. I don’t really discipline the students anymore.”
Government Intervention
In response to the numerous teacher suicides, and subsequent protests, the government has taken measures to try to alleviate some of the concerns. They created a hotline for teachers in distress where they can receive legal and counseling advice. They also mandated that a teacher cannot be removed after only one complaint. Parents can also be fined more than $3,000 if they “interfere” with “educational activities”, which includes repeatedly filing ridiculous complaints or demanding teachers do things that are not part of their official duties.
Read about American teachers who have severely bullied here.