Today we had a slight incident at school. One of my cockier students decided that he was going to refer to me as 'Baby' for the entire class. I would not stand for ANYONE to call me baby, let alone a 15 year old boy. A 15 year old boy, who for some inexplicable reason has decided his English name should be Tiffany.
Anyway, I let the first 'Baby' go...I thought perhaps I had misheard. However by the very definate third baby I had had enough. I informed him he could call me 'Teacher' or 'Catherine' but not Baby. He then stopped, I think it was an exercise to see how far he could push me. I thought that was the end of it.
When I got back to the teachers office after class I was asked how my class went. I told them it went ok, apart from being called baby. I would like to point out here I was not offended, I actually thought it was quite funny. Anyway, all hell broke lose. His Korean teacher yelled at him for a good 10 minutes about respecting females and respecting the foreign teachers. Yelling is all very well and good, but then she hit him. Hit him square on the head with a wooden drum stick. Not only that she then told him to hold himself in a press up position (Hands on the floor holding up his body weight) and left him like that for about 20 minutes.
Now, as I said before, I wasnt offended by the boy. He was just trying to see how far he could push me, and he learnt NOT VERY FAR. However, I did think the hitting and making him hurt himself was entirely over the top. Yes, if you have the threat of being hit then maybe it might encourage you to be a better student. Yet when I have discussed this with my other students in debate class they have said "yes we might get hit but we still dont behave". How do you draw the line between disciplining the students and child abuse?
In the Uk we have gone entirely the other way though, you can no longer touch a child or perform CPR for fear of being sued. When you are taught first aid for children today you are basically taught to make sure they are not in any more danger and call 999. I think we need to find the middle ground somewhere. Also, I will not be mentioning if my students decide to see how far they can go again. The worst thing was they kept asking me if I thought they were punishing him enough, my yelling at him I felt was more than enough. Ahhh Korea, who am I to judge.
