My stories of discipline come from children themselves. They tell me teachers slap hands with sticks, force students in awkward positions for extended periods of time, etc. Older teachers with tenure tend to be the most physically abusive, since complaining won’t get them fired.

Our Korean teachers at the school tend to be physically intimidating at times, occasionally shout, and use the aforementioned money system to deal with problems. Very, VERY rarely have I witnessed any sort of physical contact used as a discipline measure.

That point system is very interesting, especially when compared to the traditional punishment system. That’s also good that the parents take the bigger role in child discipline. I heard somewhere that parents used to send small rods to teachers as a way of granting them the freedom to use physical punishment on the student.

Another question then. You don’t work at a high school, so at an elementary school perhaps? One of my Korean teachers told me that her elementary teachers forced their students to be in uncomfortable posistions as punishment, such as kneeling on the desk holding their chairs above their heads. I’ve also learned of other traditional punishments where the student must support his weight with his forhead, like a pushup posistion with hands behind the back. Are these kind of practices still used in your or other elementary schools in Korea?

At the private school I work at, we have a well developed discipline system involving points earned that can be used for actual cash at Internet shopping sites. If I punish students, I’m actually taking away money they could later spend. Even the worst behaving students figure out that some free cash is better than nothing when they see their friend order something online and it gets delivered at the school.

When “delayed gratification” no longer works, or students never get wise to the system, Korean teachers intimidate, threaten, and call home. Parents are spending big money to send kids to our school, so they usually are the muscle for us.

As to Korean High schools, law or not, DO hit their students, or at least my students tell me that do. It’s simply accepted as a discipline measure here. As to why? It’s a long standing tradition, I guess.

i’m writing a paper about corporal punishment in korean high schools. i would appriciate your thoughts on korea’s tradition of hitting in the classroom. i’m not sure about this, but was it made illegal in 99, then reallowed recentely?

perhaps you would be so kind as to blog something about the subject, or maybe email me at el1lis.1ada1m @ g1ma1il.com (remove all 1’s, its an anti spam trick, dunno if it works).

저한테 쓰면 좋겠습니다.