‘Teacher Sexual Harassment Controversy’ Descriptive Assessment
“Teachers’ Personal Rights Violated”… Full Review Recommended
The National Human Rights Commission has recommended a complete review of the descriptive questions in the individual teacher competency evaluations conducted by students. It was determined that the education authorities responded passively despite students submitting sexually harassing answers in the teacher satisfaction survey, which infringed on the teachers' personal rights.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on the 18th, teachers at a high school in Sejong City filed a complaint last December, stating that although there were sexually harassing expressions in the descriptive answers of the 2022 Teacher Competency Development Evaluation student satisfaction survey, the Ministry of Education neglected and overlooked the violation of teachers' human rights through passive administration.
At that time, a student identified as A at the high school wrote sexually harassing remarks in the teacher evaluation descriptive answers such as "00 is big, is that the part where breast milk comes out when squeezed?" and "Kim Jong-un should be a pleasure squad."
In response, the affected teachers filed a complaint with the Ministry of Education requesting that the author be identified and appropriate action taken, but the responsible education office only suggested improving the filtering of teacher evaluations, citing privacy concerns as the reason for being unable to identify the student who wrote the answers.
During the NHRC investigation, the Ministry of Education explained that it had improved the filtering system by adding prohibited words and inserted a warning message before the descriptive evaluation questions stating, "Inappropriate answers unrelated to educational activities may be punished according to relevant laws and may be subject to measures for infringing on educational activities."
However, the NHRC judged that the education office in question left the teachers to deal with and resolve the damages caused by the teacher evaluation in this incident. Although they responded that the author could not be identified due to the anonymous nature of the evaluation, the NHRC pointed out that identifying the author is not technically impossible.
Furthermore, the NHRC stated, "The answers to the descriptive questions delivered to the affected teachers contain content that causes sexual humiliation and disgust, are completely unrelated to educational activities, infringe on the teachers' personal rights, and are sufficient to cause sexual humiliation."
Accordingly, the NHRC recommended that "the Minister of Education, as the implementing authority of the teacher evaluation, has the obligation to guarantee and protect the human rights of teachers" and urged the Minister to conduct a full review of the descriptive questions in the teacher evaluation and establish an evaluation method appropriate to its purpose. It also recommended preparing and implementing appropriate measures to prevent recurrence of human rights violations against teachers.
The teacher evaluation system was introduced in 2010 to enhance teacher professionalism. It consists of peer evaluations and student/parent satisfaction evaluations, among which the student/parent satisfaction evaluation is conducted anonymously in a descriptive format, leading to issues with sexual harassment and abusive language being submitted.
In response, on the 15th, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Lee Ju-ho stated, "Accepting the field's opinion that the teacher evaluation is not functioning sufficiently as a channel for improving educational activities or communication with students and parents, we will discuss and decide today to suspend this year's teacher evaluation and abolish the descriptive evaluation."
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