교실이라는 이름의 전장(戰場): 붕괴하는 공교육의 현주소와 길 잃은 교권 > K-wave Trends

The reality is that even the minimal safety net of education is collapsing. An incident in which a 4-year-old child was burned by holding a hot glue gun to his lips at a kindergarten in China clearly shows how low the professional ethics of teachers have fallen. The child molestation case committed by a teacher at a secondary school in Scotland also proves how crimes disguised as educators leave indelible psychological scars on children. These incidents go beyond simple individual deviance and prove how lax the surveillance system in education is. Children cannot trust schools, and parents are repeatedly forced to send their children to school with anxiety every day. It is a time when education authorities urgently need to go beyond a quick door-to-door response and think fundamentally about how to select teachers, provide ethics education, and establish a regular monitoring system.

The phenomenon of exodus from the educational field signals that teachers have reached a critical point where their sense of duty alone can no longer sustain them. The reality that teachers with less experience are rapidly retiring, and even principals and vice principals, who are supposed to be at the center of school management, are choosing to take honorary retirement before reaching retirement age, foretells the collapse of the education system. Low pay, excessive administrative work, and constant response to civil complaints have reduced teachers into workers worried about survival instead of taking pride in being educators. This phenomenon of departure is especially noticeable in metropolitan areas, including Gyeonggi-do, because school sites are no longer stable workplaces but have transformed into centers of conflict. Improving the treatment of teachers and improving the work environment is not simply a matter of increasing welfare, but is the minimum measure to ensure the sustainability of public education.

The closed operating structure of private foundations and the culture of retaliation against whistleblowers are chronic ills in the education world. The recent incident in which a teacher at a private school in Icheon committed suicide after suffering after exposing corruption is a tragedy that shows how absolute the power of private school foundations is. Private schools maintain an abnormal structure in which foundations monopolize personnel management rights while receiving public financial support. Accordingly, it is natural for the education community, including the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, to demand a revision to the Private School Act. If there is no institutional mechanism in place to check teachers' unfair instructions or corruption, justice in education is bound to disappear. There is an urgent need for reform accompanied by legal force to protect whistleblowers and transparently monitor the personnel of private school foundations.

The perception gap between teachers, students, and parents surrounding class disruption shows a clash of values ​​that goes beyond a lack of communication. As shown in a survey by the Gyeongnam Office of Education, the differences in perspectives between teachers who take issue with the class itself and students and parents who are sensitive to aggressive behavior or lifestyle among peers amplify conflicts in the educational field. To narrow this gap, we need to go beyond simply strengthening regulations and provide a forum for dialogue where schools can understand each other's positions as an educational community. While it is important to introduce technologies such as transferring malicious complaints out of school or establishing an AI evidence automation system to protect educational rights, re-establishing an educational culture based on mutual respect must be a priority above all else. Only when we acknowledge and empathize with each other's difficulties will the class be restored to a place of uninterrupted learning.

New leadership that leads changes in the education world and communication with the field have also emerged as important tasks. It is encouraging to see that newly elected superintendents are prioritizing protecting teaching rights and improving the educational environment, but what is important is action. As in the case of Gyeongnam, the fact that the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union and the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union agree to protect teaching rights and reduce administrative work even from different perspectives proves how serious the suffering on the ground is. In addition, attempts to improve the quality of education, such as strengthening career counseling capabilities or experiential learning through connection with the local community, suggest the direction in which education should move. The important thing is to actively reflect the voices of teachers in the field, not just table-top opinions, from the transition committee stage, and to conduct continuous monitoring and cooperation to ensure that the elected president's promises are implemented into practical policies within his term.