::A Geek in Korea::

The review for my test in one particular class was short today. We had gone over the material enough times that they had gotten used to answering the questions as a reflex. It worked well to spend this week drilling the answers into their brain. We got finished and had time to have some free conversations after we put away our books.

One of the girls in the class was talking about a teacher at their Korean school. The student was talking about the fact that none of the students in the class liked the teacher.  One of our questions was about Teacher’s day gifts. She said none of her classmates gave her teacher a present this year. This is highly unusual. I asked why no one would give a carnation to a teacher they had all year.

"First, He is very old, and he smokes in class," she said.

"He smokes during the lesson in class, or between classes on a break?" I asked.

"In class. During the lecture. Oh, and he swears too." she replied.

"He swears? To students?"

"Yeah, when he kicks them in the head, he calls them bad names."

"When he WHAT?"

"He kicks students in the head and curses."

"Your teacher KICKS students in the HEAD? Please explain."

She went on to explain that students that don’t do work are expected to get in a "push up" like position, legs bent, facing the floor, hands down on the ground. The teacher then "kicks" their head. She made the motion of stamping her foot down on someone that was in this position. She said the man was so short that the students would lose sight of him as he walked with their classmates. He wasn’t much taller than a 11 year old girl. This is probably why he needed the students to lean down for punishment. That’s the only way he could be imposing.

The student said that everyone in the class was united against this particular teacher, and would flick him off and curse at him behind his back. I don’t know what caused this situation to escalate to this point, but the hatred seems equal on both sides. He was a career teacher, but the students seemed to think he wasn’t going to retire any time soon despite his age.

It sounds like a classic case of "short man’s disease" to me.