The bottom of education falls apart.

The bottom of education falls apart.

Classrooms are no longer what they used to be.
The way teachers view children today has clearly changed. Teachers with long careers, from kindergarten to elementary and secondary, say this in one voice.
“Children fail to show emotional maturity and attitude appropriate for their age.”
Habits, manners, responsibilities, and self-control that would have been naturally formed in the past come to school without reaching their peer levels, and even if the grade goes up, they often fail to keep up with the expected growth curve. This is not a specific school or a specific teacher’s experience, but a common diagnosis among experienced teachers who have watched children for a long time in the educational field.

However, teachers do not simply blame children for this phenomenon. Experienced teachers point out that the bigger problem is the attitude and maturity of the parents behind the child. Parents today, unlike in the past, are not emotionally mature enough, lean toward self-protection and claim rights rather than responsibility and commitment, and their community vision is gradually disappearing. As a result, children’s development is bound to be slow.

The bigger problem is the parental response at the moment this low is revealed. Parents take their child’s problems straight away as a matter of self-esteem and block the guidance of a teacher with extreme protective instincts. The tendency is more pronounced for parents who lack emotional maturity or have emotional ups and downs. In some cases, parenting attitudes are excessive or, conversely, neglectful, making it difficult to even attempt collaboration with a teacher’s guidance and advice. Eventually, the child fails to learn responsibility, and the teacher becomes more tired of defending than teaching.

What do these kids look like at school? They refuse to admit wrongdoing, ignore rules, and easily cry or get angry at small points. Conflicts with friends repeatedly fail to resolve, isolate themselves or break down rules in groups. Classrooms where community is to be learned turn into spaces of injustice and distrust. Teachers are more likely to wrestle with their parents than children, and end up being forced to burnout without fulfilling their duties. Is this situation normal? No, it isn’t. It’s already abnormal. However, the long repetition of this abnormality has led many to mistake it as “that’s the way it is.”

There was a saying, “Teacher, dogs don’t eat poop.” It is true that the job as a teacher used to be hard and hard, but it would be a great illusion to dismiss the current situation as just a teacher’s daily hardship. Even experienced teachers are now at the end of burnout, and this is not just fatigue, but a warning sound that signals that the entire education system is on the verge of collapse. While our society always sticks to entrance exams and universities when we talk about educational issues, kindergarten and elementary school, which are the bases of them, are already being divided. Teachers are crumbling down first before children grow up.

It’s not about turning parents into enemies and confronting them. The crisis of education is the crisis of children and parents. In it, teachers are exhausted, children remain immature, and parents eventually lose their role. What we are trying to point out is not the question of ‘who did the wrong thing’, but the fact that everyone is collapsing together. When we face the fact that children, parents, and teachers are all hurting in the midst of an educational crisis, the path to change can open.
More seriously, these crises do not only appear in certain school age or in certain schools. The same structural problem is repeated in kindergartens, elementary schools, and middle schools. The reality is that individual teachers cannot handle it, that the collaboration of teachers alone is limited, and that the whole school can barely withstand it. This is clear evidence that education is already off track.

However, hope has not completely disappeared. Experienced and competent teachers can still hold on to children who are on the border with the power of education. However, conditions are necessary. Teachers should be given legitimate authority, and society should trust their expertise. In addition, they should be supported with a level of full support that has never been seen before. It is the only way to keep children within the confines of education, not in the realm of treatment.

As a representative adult sent by the Democratic Republic of Korea to children, teachers should be empowered to play their part. Only then can we have a clue to solve the mess. When the teacher stands up straight, the child can stand up straight, and when the child stands up straight, the whole community can find its place.

There is still hope. That’s where the restoration of our education begins: to put teachers at the forefront, to ensure that teachers are empowered to teach correctly.