Korea Middle School students think they can sleep in class....

[i_am_a_toaster]

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/11/117_97977.html


65% of students believe that they have the human right to sleep in class!

At first I thought this was a work of satire, that this was from the Korean equivalent of the Onion.   Unfortunately, I am quite wrong.  This is reality.

While I believe that corporal punishment is deplorable, there has to be means of negative reinforcement and discipline in our classrooms.  It also mind-boggling ridiculous that according to the above article that "44.5 percent of the students said they(the students) were entitled to do other things than just focusing on lessons during classes ― and  agreed to such rights. 

Why would any respectable educator, Korean or otherwise, agree that students have the right to disrupt your class by sleeping?     What is the SMOE thinking? 

[confusedsafferinkorea]

It is not the 65% of students that said they have that right that concerns me, it is the 31% of teachers who agreed.   

Scary.

[makeshiftb0y]

Of course they are going to say that.

"Why would any respectable educator, Korean or otherwise, agree that students have the right to disrupt your class by sleeping?     What is the SMOE thinking?  "

Where is the quote in the article that makes you believe this is the case. The article is about student opinion. There is nothing about what educators think about it.

On a side note. Gosh the ads on the koreatimes are disgusting. I find it hard to take seriously a piece of writing that has pictures of acne and half naked people festooned around it.

From the article:

"More than 65 percent of middle and high school students think they have the “right to sleep” during classes, a survey showed Thursday.

Additionally, 31 percent of teachers said students have such rights."

"According to the survey, 44.5 percent of the students said they were entitled to do other things than just focusing on lessons during classes ― 24 percent of teachers agreed to such rights."

[justanotherwaygook]

Where did all this "human rights" stuff come from in the past few months?  I really hope it's a mis-translation.  Most of this is nothing to do with human rihgts.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Reading the Internet sometimes makes me swear that I must be living in a parallel universe or alternative reality. What next? The right to smoke at school or come to class drunk? Thank goodness this 'student rights' nonsense has barely reached us, but when and if it does, I'll either be teaching adults, teaching at a hagwon that doesn't employ PS BS (oddly, it used to be almost always the other way round), or trying to find a country where what happens in education isn't determined by the likes of the perfectly named Mr Kwak.

[TriKorea]

WOW! Is all I can say... I thought it was a bit crazy when my Co-Teacher told me the students are allowed to come to class late (with punishment of course) because of students rights. I recalled in HS, the teachers closed their doors when the bell rang, and if you were late and didn't have a pass you went to ISS (in school suspension) for the hour.

The students job is to learn, go to class, take notes, learn the material... cell phones, sleeping, and doing other things are all disruptive and not acceptable. In my past job if I were in a meeting and played on my cell, slept, or did other work I would get a dirty look from everyone and a stern talking to after the meeting and a possible write up. Those things aren't acceptable in a professional environment, they shouldn't be acceptable at school.

And the teachers who agree with the students just need to be slapped! (sorry if that's a bit harsh... just my opinion!)

[yeti08]

It's amazing what students can get away with here in the last year and half.  I really don't like where this is all headed.  More reason to jump ship to another country.  No joke, it's only going to get a lot worse, before it gets better.  We're already not allowed to discipline kids and the kids pretty much can do whatever they like.  Parents are beyond awful and teachers don't want any headaches so they simply ignore most negative and disruptive behavior.
Wake-up Korea your children are on a fast track to put Western students to shame in the respect of poor behavior.

[i_am_a_toaster]

Perhaps you are right Rusty.   Another fellow waygooker posted this New York Times just the other day....

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2011/11/117_97878.html

"Teacher and Student Fight at School"
I realize that the fight between the student and the teacher happened last month however,  I think this is more of a trend that some people care to realize.  I have some additional anecdotal evidence to reinforce that claim.  One of my students called my co-teacher a f***** b**** in Korean yesterday after she told them to be quiet when she is speaking.  The student then ran out of our class, preceded to run out of the school and we didn't know where he went for a few hours!    He isn't the only student in the class that has borderline Autism or ADHD that are mainstreamed into our classroom without counselors.


*Sorry for the disgusting almost (NSFW) ads that the Korea Times uses....*  Just a disclaimer haha

[i_am_a_toaster]

I meant *Korea Times* not New York Times.  Sorry, my bad.

[Cranberryopah]

Personally, I see this whole thing heading somewhere. It might just be the time of year, but I'm sensing a pretty dark mood amongst my students. Open defiance is a fairly common place occurrence for me these days. It used to happen once a twice a year, but yesterday I had two whole classes directly disobey direct instructions. [/quote]

I'm so "glad" you wrote this Rusty Shackleford.  Since my middle school Ss returned from Summer Vacation, they've been 30-50% more noncompliant.  I've mentioned to the teachers that the Ss behaviour appears to have greatly worsened, but they respond "No, it's the same." However,  the number of Ss writing incident reports, and "black page" (what I call "writing lines") has tripled. When I mentioned that to the teachers, they acknowledged, "Yes, there are more Ss".  Obviously    more punishment indicates increased misbehaviour.   When I've pulled more-or-less approachable kids aside to ask what's up with the deterioration in classroom compliance,  they would shrug before saying "I don't know teacher".  It seems like I'm not the only one noticing a change.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Personally, I see this whole thing heading somewhere. It might just be the time of year, but I'm sensing a pretty dark mood amongst my students. Open defiance is a fairly common place occurrence for me these days. It used to happen once a twice a year, but yesterday I had two whole classes directly disobey direct instructions.

I'm so "glad" you wrote this Rusty Shackleford.  Since my middle school Ss returned from Summer Vacation, they've been 30-50% more noncompliant.  I've mentioned to the teachers that the Ss behaviour appears to have greatly worsened, but they respond "No, it's the same." However,  the number of Ss writing incident reports, and "black page" (what I call "writing lines") has tripled. When I mentioned that to the teachers, they acknowledged, "Yes, there are more Ss".  Obviously    more punishment indicates increased misbehaviour.   When I've pulled more-or-less approachable kids aside to ask what's up with the deterioration in classroom compliance,  they would shrug before saying "I don't know teacher".  It seems like I'm not the only one noticing a change.
[/quote]

My MS's actually improved a bit from 2-4 years ago, when we had a really bad batch and kids purposely spreading conjunctivitis to get out of school. I think that's mostly just luck. Of course, I still have a number who think the English room is for sitting around and chatting in.

We'll see what happens if we're made to abide with this BS, too.

[Yu_Bumsuk]

Just after I posted I saw a row of HS students kneeling outside the staff room. 'What did you do?'... nervous giggles. Hmmm, at 3PM? 'Ding ding-ahh [truant]'? I asked. 'Yes, sorry' one of them said, like as if she had offended me personally.

[Kev20]

I don't care if some of them sleep in a normal class. It means they're quiet at least and don't impact on others' ability to learn. If I'm planning a game that needs total participation then sleeping is a problem, but they usually wake up and play anyway - even if they don't know what to do.

I have only one kid out of a thousand who actively tries, and usually succeeds to a degree in disrupting class. He saunters in five minutes late, normally punches a couple of his mates on the way in and then takes out his mobile, throws things around, talks loudly and does anything except participate. Sometimes he just walks out of class and comes back later. As you can tell I leave discipline up to the co-teacher who also doesn't know what to do about this kid. If I could communicate with him at all, or felt I had any real authority I might try to do something.

[SpaceRook]

WOW! Is all I can say... I thought it was a bit crazy when my Co-Teacher told me the students are allowed to come to class late (with punishment of course) because of students rights. I recalled in HS, the teachers closed their doors when the bell rang, and if you were late and didn't have a pass you went to ISS (in school suspension) for the hour.

All the teachers in my school go to class late, too.  When the bell rings, that is the signal for them to start thinking about closing their email and maybe, y'know, hit the bathroom and then mozy on up to the classroom.

[woman-king]

WTF, seriously.  I would also be curious if someone fluent in Korean and English could break down the translation of "human rights" as it's used here.  How else is the Korean phrase--whatever is being translated as "human rights"--used in other contexts?

I can say that at my school a lot of teachers--including some of my co-teachers--tolerate/ignore sleeping in class, and I think we're a pretty typical middle school in Gyeonggi-do, somewhat rural but also fairly close to Seoul.  If it's tolerated or excused in class by teachers who say things like "Well, they must study so much and go to hagwon etc." then of course students are going to think it's OK--or that they "have a right"--to do it.

Of course, the amount of time they spend in hagwons and studying after school is counter-productively high, and that's an underlying issue that none of the changes being proposed and enacted by Korean education officials is properly addressing.

[justanotherwaygook]

When I think 'human rights', I think of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement etc., not the right to talk on a cell phone at school.

As for high school students, isn't high school education optional?  Their families pay some fee, right?

[anichion]

AFAIK, parents do pay for their kids' high school. I don't think it's optional, though there are vo-tech high schools and academic high schools.

Yeah, they got rid of the acne ads on the top and now they've got big butt ads and tiny butt ads. Why? Because women readers just don't have enough complexes about their looks, gosh darn it!

The hairstyle thing is something I can agree with the students on. Look, maybe it's just my western upbringing, but a kid with rainbow colored hair isn't going to distract me for more than 10 seconds. I'll move back to focusing on the teacher wearing the top that's slightly open. (C'mon teacher, bend forward, bend forward just a little more.... yessss.... )
I don't see why teachers should be enforcing hair style rules, wasting value time better spent processing mounds of pointless paperwork, shopping on Auction, or trying to figure out what I'm trying to tell them even after saying it slowly for the third time and acted it out for the 4th time.

As far as sleeping in class goes, the students quickly learn that if I catch them dozing for more than 4 minutes, I will likely attempt a prank. They wise up pretty quickly.
But from the physiological standpoint, they're clearly not getting enough sleep. It's time for parents to start thinking about the # and time of hagwon classes. Do they really need 8 hagwon classes after school? Why not 3 or 4? If your kid is falling asleep in class, where the grades actually matter, then you've got a problem.

[mcluther2112]

As an American I cannot say that our schools are perfect, but I will say that most of our problems are caused by the bottom 5% of our schools students'.  Yes the problems are severe: like a student bringing a gun to school or a knife. but at least we have police men and other authority trying to regulate the problems.
Our Principals actually leave their office and pop into classrooms.  We have bus duty, hallway monitors, In School Suspension, Out of School Suspension, Silent Lunch, school psycologists, and the fact that if you fail your tests - you repeat a year of the same grade.
In Korea these authoritative tools are not even possible.
Failing a grade level is not even possible: and they even have the audacity to say that Korean students are the smartest in the world.  BULLSHIT! 
Ive taught in korea for 3 years so I have seen it all.  The whole system is corrupt.  I blame the parents first, they schools next (cofusionism), and their culture's overall lack to do things in a timely well planned manner.
they want to do everything so fast and be the best all the time. 
Its like a Naepoleon complex or something. 

[alljokingaside]

As for the new behavior modifications that've taken place in the past month or so- here in Busan, there was a change educational policy that took place roughly a month ago- though whether it's just for vo-high schools, high schools, or schools in general, I dont know- the content of which, I don't know. They shuffled me into the meeting held, obviously, in Korean. All I understood was "Haeundae" and something about a tiger's tail. Again, don't ask. I don't know.

What I do know, have noticed, is an escalation w/r/t enforcement of school policies- more punishments (in exercise form), more kneelings in the teacher's lounge, etc.  When I asked about the new shiny-suited ajosshi that started to wander the school grounds, a co-teacher replied that it was a retired policeman, hired either by the BMCOE or the school. Now, asking why this was done, she looked at me and asked something to the tune of, aren't there policemen hired by schools in the states? Now, where I went, shootings, shanking, and beatings were a realistic possibility and police presence was and is justified (O, public school). When we're talking about truancy, dress code, etc. I think that it's a bit much. Though I will say that an afterschool student of mine showed up a week ago with a black eye. I, horrified, asked, "what happened?" Of course, he kept mum. So maybe not a horrible addition.

The point? With the school cracking down on things related to the status quo and conformity measures, out of nowhere to this foreigner's eye, when, just a bit ago, some of these behaviors were not only tolerate, but encouraged, I, were I a student there, would respond with increased obstinacy. Seeing the designs of many classroom curricula, were I a student, I would scoff at the nature of the process, one that seems to reward obsequiousness and conformity over education/knowledge. (e.g. a silly example, but a student in a Golden Bell competition answered "Steve Paul Jobs" to "CEO of Apple" to get eliminated) Not to compare west v. east; both have and the last point can be said of many schools everywhere, esp. w/r/t the last point. Just to say, were I a student seeing the underlying hypocrisies, I too would probably react within my means (ie unruly behavior in class)

Also, I like when students sleep over them yelling and chatting with their friends. Though it does encourage others, at least it's quiet and the students who actually might have an interest in hearing some of the stuff I say can hear what it is I have to say. Reaching 40-50% of students vs. 0% because you've spent all of your time addressing disruptive behavior, etc. is a win in my books, sadly.

[joefred111]

Well, given all the studying they do, I think it's fine. I try to wake them up but also try to be understanding of their situation.

I agree, though - there is almost no way to negatively reinforce student behavior. And the Office of Education is gearing more and more towards students' rights...