Extreme Job: Elementary School Teacher — Where Did the Teacher Go?

1. A Childhood Memory

I remember lying awake at night in elementary school, afraid that if I got scolded by my teacher, I would be scolded again by my parents when I got home. Even on the days I stood at the back of the classroom and was hit on the palm, what I truly feared was not so much the teacher as my parents' nagging the next morning. When the words "Your teacher said…" went back and forth over the dinner table, the child admitted his mistake but was anxious at the same time. It was not that I hated being scolded — it was that I was afraid the scolding would carry over into the other space of home and feel like a "double punishment."

But now, this scene has been completely turned on its head. Today, when a teacher disciplines a student, the discipline itself can lead to a legal dispute. If a child says to a parent, "I feel so distressed because of my teacher," the parent's gaze is directed not at the child but at the teacher. We have entered an era where a single scolding word or a single hand gesture can escalate from "guidance" into "child abuse." In the past, "if you get scolded by the teacher, you get scolded again at home" was a source of fear, but now the reality is, "if you get scolded by the teacher, you blame the teacher again at home."

At this change, someone asks. "Where on earth did the teacher go?"

2. Protecting Students' Rights — Why Does It Clash with Teachers' Right to Educate?

The creation of student rights ordinances, the easing of hair and dress regulations in schools, and the guarantee of students' freedom of expression and participation were clear progress. A society that once believed corporal punishment could be justified now recognizes it as abuse. This is also evidence that our society has moved away from authoritarianism and come to value the dignity of its members more.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that the teacher's right to educate was not sufficiently discussed in the process. The right to educate is not simply "the right to teach." It is a responsible authority that makes learning possible within the community of the classroom and guarantees the opportunity for every student to grow. The fact that students' rights matter does not automatically bring the teacher's right to educate along with it. Rights are sometimes in tension. If a student's privacy matters, where is the authority of the teacher who must guide it guaranteed? If a student's freedom of expression matters, how do we control blocking others from speaking during class?

Protecting students' rights is itself praiseworthy. But when that protection proceeds without a proper balance with the teacher's right to educate, it looks like a clash. And this clash worsens not only when one side is completely sacrificed, but in a fear in which both sides must constantly ask themselves, "What did I do wrong?" The teacher, while looking after the student's rights, is at the same time calculating whether his or her own conduct will be a legal problem.

3. What Happens to the Classroom When Even Legitimate Guidance Is Feared?

Guidance is the core of education. Teaching children to learn order in group life, to respect the rights of others, and to reconcile views different from their own — that is guidance. But today, many teachers fear even legitimate guidance. Going into the classroom and telling a child to be quiet, sending a child who is not focusing on the assignment out into the hallway for a moment, briefly pressing a distracted child to pay attention — all of this can become the subject of a child-abuse report or a parent's complaint.

What happens to the classroom when the teacher is afraid? The first thing that appears is silence. The children no longer ask questions during class. They do not make eye contact with the teacher. Because they fear the guidance, or shrink back in case that guidance later becomes testimony against them. The second thing that appears is neglect. With a mindset of "let's not touch it," teachers limit themselves to the minimum intervention. The third thing that appears is that the very atmosphere of the classroom worsens. A safe classroom is a place that gives students the feeling of being protected within the school, but when the teacher shrinks, the child loses the adult who would protect them.

The truly ironic thing is that the system meant to protect children is instead tying the teacher's hands and feet. Not because the teacher does not want to act, but because the teacher is unable to act, the classroom grows more and more powerless. Not because the teacher is incompetent, but because the teacher has given up his or her own authority, the children's education faces a crisis.

4. If the System Meant to Protect Children Is Tying the Teacher's Hands

Prohibiting child abuse is a basic principle of society. No child should ever be the target of an adult's venting. But systems do not always work on good intentions alone. In the educational field, the apparatus meant to prevent and punish child abuse is discouraging every moment a teacher guides a student. It is a paradox in which, in trying to protect one child, the educational environment of the entire classroom is harmed.

What does it mean, concretely, that the teacher's hands are tied? First, physical intervention. In an era where even a hand reaching in to break up a fight between children is frightening. Second, emotional intervention. If a teacher intervenes emotionally in a child's problem behavior, it can be mistaken not for emotional coaching but for child abuse, so the teacher suppresses emotion. Third, institutional intervention. The teacher-rights protection committee, child-abuse reports, parent consultations… in the awareness that everything can become the seed of a legal dispute, teachers fear the procedure.

The essence of this problem is not to restore only the teacher's authority. It is to face squarely the fact that the educational field is exposed to too much criticism, and that the essence of education is being damaged not by the teacher's fault but by errors in institutional design. Protecting the student and protecting the teacher must point in the same direction. To protect the student, the strength for the teacher to stand is needed, and to protect the teacher, a safety net for the student to accept the teacher's guidance is needed.

5. Conclusion: The Teacher's Place

What I feared in childhood was not the teacher's scolding but my parents' nagging, and the combination of the two. But now that combination has been reversed, and we have entered an era in which people fear the teacher's guidance. That should be social progress, but in the educational field it is a serious regression.

Where did the teacher go? The teacher is still in the classroom. What has changed is not the teacher's place but the teacher's authority. We need a social system that respects the teacher's right to educate as much as it respects students' rights. The system that protects children should not tie the teacher's hands but rather point toward giving the teacher the strength to teach children properly.

The person most afraid of going to school is not the teacher and the student, but the child's future. The teacher is a safe fence for the student, and at the same time a door through which the student goes out into the world. If the day comes when that door does not open, the first to be affected are the children.

So I ask again. Where is the teacher's place? The answer is closer than we think. When we let go of the teacher's hand — from that law, that ordinance, that common sense by which we bound it — the teacher's place, too, will be found again.