A Memory in One's School Days, a Whip of Love - Pros
By Ko Yun Ji junior / Dept.of Business Administration
I really hated corporal punishment in my school days. I would tremble with fear when a teacher whipped me with a rod. However I missed the teacher's whippings after I entered university because I perceived it as love from my teacher, not as a punishment.
According to an article in a daily newspaper, 'Please Pick up a Switch for Our Sons And Daughters,' the mother club of Cheongju Mechanical & Technical High School in Chungcheongbuk-do handed out thirty-nine rods to every teacher in the school. Moreover, the students handed the teachers a resolution that they would make a great school that value human rights, autonomy and responsibility with parents and teachers. The students saw the parents with respect, not with grievance.
What is the difference between a school and a society? In society, if someone makes a blunder, he or she would pay the costs for it. However, if students make a mistake, they can be pardoned and be corrected. A school is a place to learn the responsibility of freedom, and the order and discipline of the community under the guidance of teachers. However to effectively discipline students, it is necessary to inflict physical pain on especially defiant students in school. Corporal punishment for this purpose should not be regarded as violence because it is to educate them. What will happen if corporal punishment is prohibited by law? There might be many more students who don't follow teachers.
Teachers probably know that whipping is not a means of disciplining troublemakers. Yet, to educate every student better, as the final way, teachers need to whip students who violate school rules.
One day I saw a news story about an old teacher and his students. The students who are already in their middle-age, still visit their teacher and they thank him for his teaching because he often punished them to lead them to become upright persons. They regard the teacher's whipping as love. I was also often whipped by teachers in my school days. At that time, I tried to do study hard and to behave well because I was scared of corporal punishment. However thanks to the whipping, I think, I could grow up a straight person. In the light of education, corporal punishment gives students an active attitude to reflect their misbehavior themselves. Students who can not control themselves, who can't get rid of their bad habits, and who often make trouble need to be reprimanded by corporal punishment. On television, bad news is more often reported than good news, so we need to consider tiny parts of the whole to prevent bigger problems.
Hidden Violence Behind Trust -Cons
By Song Kyoung Mi Senior / Dept. of Korean Language and Literature
Have you ever done an old-fashion board puzzle? You know this game can not be completed if a piece of the puzzle is lost. A school is pretty similar to a puzzle game. It wouldn't be successful if trust didn't exist between teachers, students and parents. The trust here is a mutual relationship, not an unilateral one. To have confidence in all, they should trust each other. However, recently, the confidence has disappeared between teaches and parents as well as teachers and students. Furthermore the teachers' whipping of students, called the 'God of love' is causing us mistrust. In 2001, the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development announced a law about corporal punishment in middle and high school. It provides the size and place of switches in school. The length of a switch can't be over 1 centimeter, and it must be placed in the designated place outside the students' space. Therefore, a teacher should not inflict corporal punishment on students in other places and with other switches. However, there have been some teachers who are against the law, and some students even report the teachers to the police. Teachers describe this situation as losing their authority.
The most important reason that I am against corporal punishment is that teachers are also humans. Thus, sometimes, they can not control their emotions so that they could beat a student to vent their anger. This case is problematic because there isn't any objective standard of corporal punishment, and teachers at times inflict over-the-top punishment.
A couple of weeks ago, a circulating movie on the internet was a big issue. In the movie, one elementary teacher was mercilessly slapping a student across the face and the student was in first grade and had just graduated from kindergarten. Like this, sometimes teachers break down educational authority by themselves. One of the purposes of education is to bring changes in students' behavior. However, corporal punishment, which is a instrument of education, hasn't done its role of direct educational correction of the students' misbehavior. The true educational effect can be expected when a teacher calls students to account for his or her wrong attitude. Then, finally, students would be changed by themselves. However, corporal punishment doesn't cause even a slight change in student' life. For example, some female students in middle and high school sometimes modify their uniforms as they want them, and teachers sometimes whip them so they won't wear the repaired uniform. However, the punishment doesn't work. The female students change their uniforms just in front of their teachers and still wear the repaired ones. They have no attitude towards reflection. Like this, corporal punishment is not an ultimate means. It just gives a negative effect on students who are sensitive about their feelings.
Even if corporal punishment is done under the strict regulations under the name of 'God of love,' there will be trouble all the time unless it is done exactly by the guidelines. Moreover, it is not appropriate to whip students who are in puberty.
A teacher is one who teaches students and guides them to a better life. To converse with students as friends or as a parent would bring more positive effects than to inflict corporal punishment on them.