Finding an answer in a dead teachers society

Kim Seung-hyun
The author is a deputy director of national news at the JoongAng Ilbo.

“If not for the vacation breaks, teaching is a profession to avoid,” my wife’s niece visiting Seoul said during the summer break, half-jokingly. She teaches grade eight in a middle school. The morale of teachers has hit rock bottom since the death of a young teacher at Seo 2 Elementary School, in a posh neighborhood of Seocho District, southern Seoul, groaning that teachers’ sole relief is the vacation period.

Younger teachers in particular are receiving more attention. Older teachers ask them if they’re doing alright, when they seem to have lost some weight. The senior teachers plead with the younger ones to talk to them if there’s anything on their mind. I asked the niece if school life was hard. “It’s not as bad as in Seoul. But I often do get angry while talking to the parent of a difficult student,” she confided. I felt sorry that our niece, who still looks like a child to me, has to argue over her students with their parents.

The Seo 2 primary school teacher who committed suicide was born in 2000, two years younger than our niece. It is disheartening that she had to cut her life short before it could bloom, after having worked so hard to become a teacher. In her diary the teachers’ union revealed, she wrote that the workload and the trouble with the student had become so overwhelming that she “wished to let everything go.” The diary includes this line, too: “It is too suffocating. While eating, my hands shook, and I almost cried.”

It is premature to conclude that she ended her life due to the unbearable pressure from parents. That is something the education and law enforcement authorities must find out. But the suicide of a 23-year-old teacher has enormous social ramifications. It has flashed a warning on a gigantic sinkhole in our society.

Flowers are laid before the main gate of Seo 2 Elementary School in a posh neighborhood in southern Seoul to pay tribute to the tragic death of a young teacher who committed suicide after facing insurmountable pressure from the parents of her students.

The tragedy has sent thousands of teachers into the streets to share the suffering and hardship of their profession, while others relayed their vexing episodes at their school on the internet. Teacher authority had been crumbling amid our indifference. Testimonies from colleagues suggest that even a rookie teacher with less than two years of experience could be pushed to extremes. What mental void did our niece really feel when the classroom she dreamed of standing in one day suddenly turned into a place as smothering and unendurable as a prison cell?

A 43-year-old teacher interviewed about the falling authority of teachers said that he, too, could have died. He was accused of child abuse by the parents of a student he disciplined as a homeroom teacher last year. Fortunately, the teacher gained conscience two days after attempting suicide. He made his elementary student write down his misbehavior, and when he kept fooling around, the teacher grabbed his shoulder, triggering the accusation that the teacher tried to choke the student. He was tried at court. The father of two thought that the only way to prove his innocence was to end his life.

President Yoon Suk Yeol and his government are exploring ways to restore the dignity of teachers. But whether our society can solve this crisis is uncertain. Could fixing the student rights ordinance, which has become the basis for all malicious charges and complaints against teachers, or putting students’ behaviors detrimental to education activities on individual school records really restore teachers’ authority? How can the egoistic ways of “monster parents” be fixed? And what about the misdeeds from the collusion between some greedy teachers and private academies? Our education system evolving around the college entrance exam has pushed our society into an anomie, which can morph any of the students, parents, or teachers into monsters when the time comes.

Witch-hunting won’t solve any of these problems. We can refer to the 1990 film “Dead Poets Society” for inspiration. The philosophical question on the past elite education system can be applied to solving our education conundrum today. Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), a promising student in the movie, was mesmerized by his new unorthodox English teacher, John Keating (Robin Williams), and joins a poetry and play club. When confronted by his father who demanded he quit the club to concentrate on getting into an Ivy League medical school, Neil commits suicide. The father rushing to his son in slow motion upon the sound of a gunshot remains a heartbreaking scene. Can we stop this ongoing tragedy in real life?

We must ponder. Was the headmaster wrong for punishing the members of the Dead Poets Society? Was Keating, who taught students of “carpe diem” to seize the day and inspire their individuality and sentiment, really liable for the death of the student?

We must find an answer in a “dead teachers society,” where teachers commit suicide after wrestling with insurmountable pressure from monster parents. The task of restoring the fallen dignity of teachers from rock bottom will require a sharper insight than the movie director who created the great film.