Over the summer, my 11-year-old boy visited his grandparents in Seoul, where his slightly older cousin lived. Although his cousin, who was in 7th grade, had a summer vacation from late July to mid-August, my son was able to see him only on the weekends, if he was lucky. The cousin, who lives in the ultra-competitive area of Gangnam, had to go to various “hagwons,” or private tuition schools, till 11 p.m. every night. During his summer vacation! This didn’t stop when school restarted. He would go to various hagwons after school until very late at night, six days a week.

It was a humbling schedule that fed into a fiercely competitive life, something that I could never imagine for myself as a professional. And this was what a 12-year-old boy had to deal with. As I kept telling my boy, “You’re lucky we don’t live in Korea.”

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The Atlantic recently published an article titled, “Parent Diplomacy Is Overwhelming Teachers,” describing the different and diverging trends of parent-teacher communications in the new era of online grading platforms and COVID-19. The following quote in the article from a teacher jumped out at me: “Whereas parents once had to either wait for official events or go through secretaries and principals to set up separate in-person conferences with teachers, they can now ping me with the click of a button. Though I’m glad the bar for asking questions is lower, I learned quickly not to post grades after I put my baby to bed, because when I did, within minutes, I’d receive emails from parents who wanted to discuss their kid’s grades ― no matter how late it was.”

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The article goes on to describe how some private school parents feel a sense of entitlement due to paying so much for their child’s schooling that they provide input on everything from how field trips should be run to which reading materials should be assigned. Of course, this pales in comparison to what’s happening in Korea where teachers are literally killing themselves over the incessant pressures put on them by the parents.

It was the suicide death of a 23-year-old elementary school teacher that galvanized social discussion and mass protests over the extreme parental engagement that amounts to bullying of the teachers, leading to chronic stress that resulted in teachers fleeing the profession and, in some cases, taking their own lives. Apparently, a pupil in her class had slashed another student in the head with a pencil, leading to vociferous complaints by the victim’s child against the teacher, serving as the immediate trigger for the suicide. There is an extra wrinkle here. Apparently, the teacher committed suicide in her own classroom on school grounds because she wanted her death to be ruled as an on-the-job death so as to be formally recognized by authorities that her job had killed her and so her surviving family would be eligible for monetary damages. In a very intentional way, her death was a protest against her working conditions.

Of course, it’s easy to blame overbearing parents or the loss of status suffered by teachers in recent years as society puts more emphasis on student rights. The latter was a natural reaction against decades of traditions that allowed teachers to physically and emotionally abuse their students with impunity. However, some argue that Korea overcorrected its support of student rights, leading to the erosion of respect for teachers. The framing of this tragedy as a binary between teacher’s and student’s rights is a red herring. If only it were that simple. Then it just becomes a matter of finding the right balance.

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No, this phenomenon has to be understood in the overall context of uber competition in all facets of Korean society, especially for the students. When the competition for getting into top schools defines the trajectory of your life, a mad chase for the scarce resources begins the moment you are born. Parents have to use every single strategy available to ensure that their kids can excel ― at least not be left behind ― so that they can progressively move up the ladders of advancement and on through the unrelenting heat and pressures of society.

The cost to the parents is not just engagement. Shepherding kids through these narrow gateways to success demands fearsome sacrifices on the part of the parents as well, not only in terms of money but also in time and effort. It’s an all-consuming family effort. The price is unbearably high. They are literally buying their kid’s future success.

No wonder some parents feel a sense of entitlement for paying such high a price. In this world, teachers are mere faceless customer service agents who can be abused in bouts of righteous anger over a service that parents aren’t happy with. This is what happens when the whole society is geared towards hyper consumption.

Jason Lim ([email protected]) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.

Source: https://t-tees.com
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