Decline in Teacher Popularity and Educational Authority

The decline in the popularity of teaching is due to various factors, including decreasing job satisfaction, oversupply of teachers, and increased challenges from students and parents.

### The Current State of the Teaching Profession and the Issue of Protecting Educational Authority
* 📉 The popularity of the teaching profession is declining, with many teachers voluntarily retiring before reaching retirement age and a majority considering **changing jobs or resigning**. Job satisfaction has hit an all-time low, leading to a decrease in the number of students aspiring to become teachers and a **lower competition rate for teaching materials and education colleges**.
* 💸 Money is considered a major issue, with real wages decreasing due to the **somewhat low wage increase rate** and **civil servant pension reforms**. The primary cause is likely the **decrease in population** and **educational investment**.
* 👪 Due to the population issue, the number of students per teacher is decreasing, leading to an **oversupply of teachers**. However, teacher organizations argue that the statistics are incorrect and that teachers already have an **excessive workload**, so reducing the number of teachers would only **worsen the quality of education**.
* 👩 Dealing with school violence and difficult parents is a significant challenge for teachers. Some parents are overly involved in their children's education, monitoring teachers' private lives and even resorting to **verbal abuse or violence**.
* 👩 Reporting child abuse has become a contentious issue, as the criteria are **vague** and the scope is **too broad**. Teachers have to constantly monitor themselves, leading to a situation where they may become **hesitant in their educational actions**.
* 🛡 Teachers have almost no means to defend themselves when a report is filed, and it's easy to attack them without the risk of being counterattacked. As a result, many teachers are joining **insurance products to prepare for violations of their rights**.
* 🌐 The decline in teachers' authority is a global issue, and it would be beneficial to refer to overseas cases for **effective solutions**. For example, the United States has an **immunity privilege system** that protects teachers from legal problems related to educational activities.
* ⚖ In Korea, efforts are being made to protect teachers' rights for conditions, with new standards defining violations of educational authority and a new legal system to **enhance teachers' daily life guidance authority** passing through the National Assembly. However, there is a **lack of communication within the National Assembly** regarding the implementation of these measures.

Originally, being a teacher was a prestigious profession. It was respected in society and was one of the dream jobs. But these days, its popularity is declining. There are discussions among teachers about it. The escape is through intelligence. In reality, more teachers are voluntarily retiring before reaching retirement age. According to a survey, the majority are considering changing jobs or resigning. Job satisfaction has also hit an all-time high. Naturally, the number of students dreaming of becoming teachers is decreasing. Nowadays, teaching materials and education colleges are not as popular as before. The competition rate continues to decrease. Of course, the passing cutoff will also decrease. Recently, someone passed Busan National University of Education with a grade of 4.2. The average grade has dropped, not just the minimum grade. The successful candidate's average grade in the college entrance exam dropped from the top 1% to the top 2%.

When you look at why this is happening, first of all, there is an issue with money. Here, there is a similar problem to civil servants. Although the wage increase rate is somewhat low, with the reform of civil servant pensions, real wages are decreasing. There is an argument like this. The biggest cause is likely to be the decrease in population and educational investment. First of all, looking at the population issue, from kindergarten students to high school students, the population peaked in the 1980s and now it has almost halved. Kindergartens are collapsing first. They are on the front lines of the population cliff, shouting at the edge of the cliff, being pushed to the edge and already jumping off, saying not to push. The number of kindergarten students is decreasing significantly. The government recently announced that since the number of students has decreased, they will also reduce the number of teachers. Naturally, the popularity as a profession will decline. The basis for the government to say this is that.

If we continue like this, the number of students per principal will decrease compared to the OECD average. There is an issue of oversupply of teachers. This is a bit of a position like this. However, teacher organizations will naturally oppose it, especially claiming that the statistics are incorrect. They say that if you count the number of teachers without excluding those on leave, substitute teachers, and health teachers, the number of students per class will exceed the OECD average. Already, teachers have an excessive workload. But if we reduce the number of teachers here, the quality can only deteriorate. They argue like this. In particular, if we reduce new hires, the number of young teachers will decrease, leading to an aging teacher population and a risk of falling behind in education trends. Such discussions are also raised, and teachers.

When the number decreases, there is a high possibility that the collapse of local high schools will accelerate. This is not a solution to the nearby problem. Some people have this opinion. Nevertheless, if there is a driving force that makes you choose this profession, it is probably values like honor or fulfillment. But right now, we can't even take care of these things. We fell into conditions. As the corona situation improves, the issue of school violence is once again receiving attention. The number of reports and counseling cases related to this issue has returned to the level before corona. Whenever you forget, it becomes news. There are incidents like students hitting teachers with brooms, students sexually harassing professors, which are already very famous incidents. In particular, there was a shocking incident that occurred in an elementary school where a child, when stopped by a teacher from hitting another child, grabbed a woodworking saw and approached the teacher.

The students are swearing, shouting, and causing a commotion, but the teacher can't handle this. It's said that dealing with parents is even more difficult than dealing with students. Of course, there are many good parents these days. There are also many demanding parents. There are many schools that run smoothly without any issues. However, isn't there always one troublemaker who clouds the water? If in our school or class, there were machines to make muddy water, muscle coolers, and mental crushers, that class would collapse. Especially some parents try to contact us relentlessly. They call day and night, weekends, for hours on end. Some even set up separate work phones just for communicating with the teacher. Even people who are not in business are contacted by parents. These days, even university professors receive calls from parents. Some parents are so obsessed that even when their children are adults, they contact the teacher.

They even interfere with personal lives. The makeup is too heavy, the clothes are too flashy, and they look like troublemakers. They say everything, monitoring even on KakaoTalk profiles and Instagram. If you go on vacation and post pictures or upload body profiles, they criticize. As parents, I can somewhat understand their concerns about their kids watching, but the problem is that their private lives outside of school are being invaded. More direct violations can occur. Parents sometimes even verbally abuse teachers, resorting to violence. In the past, it used to be like, What does your father do? But these days, it's more like, What will your father do? It's scary. Particularly, what makes teachers avoid their lives is dealing with complaints and lawsuits. If complaints keep piling up within a certain period, the institution has no choice but to respond, and teachers have to go back and forth to various places.

But there are cases where it doesn't involve complaints or lawsuits, but rather it goes through the route of innocence. Especially when it comes to child abuse issues, it's very frustrating. I heard that during a class, a child was reported for child abuse because they were sleeping and got woken up. There was also a report made saying that we were discriminating by not stamping the notification slip, and another report was made for stopping a child from hitting another child, which was also considered child abuse. In this situation, even if our child is being blocked by someone at school, the teacher cannot provide protection. It's the innocent kids who end up getting hurt. When I discipline my child for misbehaving, if it disrupts the class and prevents harm to other children, but in the process, if the child's feelings get hurt, it could be considered child abuse. The problem is, if one student feels a little upset, even if the whole class is feeling upset, no matter how chaotic the situation is on-site and how urgent the situation is.

Even if an incident occurs, we cannot even give proper discipline. It's a system that does not consider the situation. In fact, student rights, which were originally meant to protect the weak, can now be used by some students or parents for attacking purposes. As a result, more weak individuals are being created. While it is not a problem in itself, there are many flaws in the transitional period, so there is a lot of room for misuse. Another issue with reporting child abuse is that the scope of what constitutes child abuse is too broad. However, the criteria are not clear. Because the range of what constitutes child abuse is not clear, teachers have to constantly monitor themselves. If not, they may become hesitant in their educational actions, eventually giving up on discipline altogether. In fact, recently, an elementary school teacher posted on the internet.

The article became a hot topic. He says he never says bad things to kids. He gave up on sanctioning those who bother others or cause trouble. It feels like being hit a little too hard. Even if it's not a guilty verdict yet, just receiving a report can lead to a teacher being stripped of their position. But if stripped of their position, they can receive up to a 70% pay cut. It can also limit promotions, and just receiving a report can cause tremendous damage. Even if later proven innocent, these disadvantages are not reversible. And when a report is filed, teachers have almost no means to defend themselves. It's easy to attack, but defense is difficult. Especially, there is a lack of collective response. In other countries, when a lawsuit is filed, there is a feeling of fighting together with a good organization.

Korea has a strong sense of individual battles. Teachers have to respond to each situation on their own. So nowadays, teachers cope by joining insurance products. They say there are special products to prepare for conditions violations. It's about receiving support for legal fees or medical expenses that may occur. They say the number of people joining this is increasing continuously. And it's not only about defense but also not about counterattacking. Even if a teacher tries to counterattack with a self-defense crime, it's hard to establish a self-defense case in child abuse incidents. Especially attacking students' parents as a teacher seems to be still cautious and resistant. In short, from the perspective of some bad people, there is nothing as good as wanting to harass teachers. Just by reporting alone, they can cause harm, and there is no risk of being counterattacked with a self-defense crime. In the current meta, it's really a scam build. An urgent patch is needed.

In police investigations, prosecution investigations, and court proceedings, once you get involved in a lawsuit, you end up being dragged around for several years, consuming money, time, health, spirit, and passion as a teacher. Naturally, you can't even conduct classes properly, so the quality of the classes inevitably deteriorates, and other students end up being harmed. Fearing involvement in a lawsuit, I give up discipline in advance, so I can't control problematic behaviors like a child disturbing the class by bothering a friend. Eventually, it will be the kind students who suffer. Teachers come in, just summon and leave. They become instructors, not teachers, and it becomes very bureaucratic. Normally, responsibility comes with rights, but currently, teachers have no rights at all, yet they bear all the responsibility. In this situation, it's natural for them to avoid responsibility.

It becomes inevitable to handle work, and the distortion of the direction of national education is inevitable. Therefore, a structure has been created where individuals who sincerely carry a sense of mission and responsibility as teachers can disappear. That is why this condition protection agency insists that normalization is necessary not only for the sake of teachers but also to protect the learning rights of the majority of righteous students and to prevent the collapse of the national education system. However, why are there so many violations of educational authority? In the past, when students' human rights were low, there were quite a few cases of students being abused by teachers. Those who have bad memories from that time are now parents, which may lead to a significant distrust of schools or teachers. However, there are cases where such distrust is being aggressively expressed, and the lingering effects of the past are still present.

They say that the current generation of teachers, who grew up in the same era, were scolded a lot during their school days, but now that they have grown up and become teachers themselves, they find themselves scolding students and parents again. Recently, work-life balance has improved slightly, and there is a growing atmosphere of shared parenting between men and women. With the trend of having only one child, the time invested in one child has relatively increased. Therefore, it seems that parents are more involved in school activities. Some also argue that student rights are overly emphasized these days, leading to a difficulty in controlling students, especially with the synergy of juvenile laws. There are differing interpretations on this matter. It's not that the conditions are low now, but rather that children's rights and student rights are not necessarily high.

Are child abuse cases still occurring in kindergartens? It was essential to enhance students' human rights. Think about the past when this was lacking. How many students were harmed? Now, it is crucial to establish conditions promptly and create means to control problematic students. Lowering student human rights is a wrong idea. Blanket control is not the answer. Some argue that claiming high student rights is only partially correct. As evidence, in some schools, there are still regulations on hair length and dress code. Isn't it most beautiful when students are neat? This can be a problem. According to advanced countries' standards, this is considered backward because it views controlling children as a means. Schools consider it a convenient system for parents. So, how should we solve this issue of school authority? In fact, the decline in school authority is a reality.

It's not just our problem, you know. If you look at foreign countries, it's a total mess. So, it would be good to refer to overseas cases. In the case of the United States, for example, there is something called immunity privilege. This means that teachers are not held responsible for problems that arise while conducting educational activities legally. They also defend against frivolous lawsuits to prevent being dragged into indiscriminate litigation. Even if a lawsuit is filed, the institution supports the response. Teachers can be free from the problem and even separate problematic students. Students who harm the teacher's class cannot enter. In fact, just having this system makes teachers feel secure. They can continue teaching. Moreover, in places like Louisiana, students who cause harm are well criminally punished, sometimes even receiving heavier penalties because they have harmed other students. It's a kind of regulation. If you violate the authority of the teacher, you will also be held accountable.

It's going to be very tiring to agree to these terms before you can participate in the class, right? Because students and parents have agreed, they have to accept it. In the UK, physical contact was originally prohibited, but they abolished it because the issue of school violence became serious. They set a limit on permissible physical force. This doesn't mean allowing corporal punishment, but enabling minimal defense in the process of preventing violence. Moreover, it guarantees the right to discipline verbally. As you can see, it seems to be essential to control and protect the offending students, allowing them to focus on the class. In Korea, we are also working hard to protect students for conditions. At least, it seems like the core is to protect students from abuse or unfair treatment and to focus on the class.

We are reestablishing the standards. If one refuses to follow legitimate guidelines for daily life or intentionally disrupts educational activities, it will be defined as a violation of educational authority. With these new standards, it will be possible to enforce penalties. Moreover, a new legal system has been established to enhance teachers' authority for daily life guidance, which has passed through the National Assembly. They are also preparing enforcement decrees. Additionally, if there is a history of severe misconduct or dementia, it will be recorded in the personal records. Although these processes are ongoing, there is a lack of communication within the National Assembly. This is roughly the situation, and it would be great to see effective measures implemented as soon as possible for the normalization of schools. That's all for today's video. This is all I have done during my tenure.

학교폭력 말려도 아동학대라고?

바쁜 세상, 한 입 정돈 괜찮잖아요

. 비즈니스 문의 : scopepublic@naver.com
. 인스타그램 : https://www.instagram.com/hanip_reels
. 틱톡 : https://www.tiktok.com/@hanip.official

. 업로드 일정 : 매주 토요일 오전 11시
. 욕설, 혐오 및 차별 표현, 타인에 대한 공격, 가짜 뉴스, 링크 등이 포함된 댓글은 삭제됩니다.

. 영상 편집 툴 : Premiere Pro, After Effect
. Ending BGM : Feeling Alright - Gavin Luke


지식한입

The Decline of Teaching as a Dream Profession

Teaching was once a prestigious and respected profession but is now facing a decline in popularity and job satisfaction.

Many teachers are voluntarily retiring or considering changing careers, leading to a decrease in the number of students aspiring to become teachers.

The population decrease and educational investment are contributing to an oversupply of teachers, leading to discussions and opposition from teacher organizations.

Challenges of School Violence and Parental Pressure

School violence is resurging to pre-pandemic levels, with concerning incidents like students attacking teachers.

Parental pressure and interference have escalated, with some crossing the line into verbal abuse and even violence.

The excessive involvement of parents in teachers' personal lives and the threat of complaints and lawsuits have created a challenging environment for educators.

Challenges and Misuse of Child Abuse Reporting

Child abuse reports are being misused, leading to a lack of protection for innocent children and creating a system that hinders discipline in schools.

The broad scope and unclear criteria for child abuse make teachers constantly monitor themselves and can lead to them giving up on discipline altogether.

The current system allows for reports to cause significant and irreversible damage to teachers, who have little means to defend themselves.

Teachers in Korea are facing increasing challenges, leading many to join insurance products to prepare for legal and medical expenses.

The fear of being involved in lawsuits is causing them to avoid discipline and responsibility, ultimately harming the quality of education.

This has led to a call for normalization to protect teachers and the education system, as the distrust of teachers from the past continues to impact the present.

The Changing Dynamics of School Authority and Student Rights

The current generation of teachers is finding themselves scolding students and parents, reflecting a shift in parenting dynamics and increased focus on student rights.

There is a debate on the emphasis of student rights and the decline of school authority, with some advocating for more control over problematic students.

Overseas, the United States has implemented immunity privilege for teachers and strict punishments for students who disrupt the learning environment, contributing to a sense of security and authority in the classroom.

The Evolution of School Discipline Measures

Physical contact was initially prohibited in UK schools but later allowed in response to rising violence, with a limit on force.

The focus is on protecting students from abuse and unfair treatment, while reestablishing standards and enforcing penalties for misconduct.

The National Assembly in Korea has passed a new legal system to enhance teachers' authority and record misconduct.

Effective communication and implementation of these measures are needed for the normalization of schools.