Criticism Comment by Kim Jong-gil, Spokesperson for the People Power Party at Seoul Metropolitan Council, Catches My Eye
Cho Hee-yeon, the Superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, has started a one-person protest to oppose the abolition of the Student Human Rights Ordinance. He plans to continue the protest by touring across Seoul for the next ten days.
Kim Jong-gil, spokesperson for the People Power Party in the Seoul Metropolitan Council (photo), issued a statement on the 14th, rebutting that Superintendent Cho is inciting that student human rights will collapse if the Student Human Rights Ordinance is abolished through his protests.
He also stated that this is a low-level fear marketing strategy that stirs up citizens' anxieties about the future of Seoul education.
Spokesperson Kim argued that believing students' human rights are protected through the Student Human Rights Ordinance in the current era is tantamount to completely denying the effectiveness of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea and the statutory laws that institutionally guarantee the basic rights of children and adolescents.
He said, "The possibility that students will suffer human rights violations and that student human rights will be disregarded if the Student Human Rights Ordinance is abolished is zero. Conversely, among the 17 metropolitan and provincial governments, are human rights violations against students more frequent in the 11 regions that currently do not have a Student Human Rights Ordinance?" He added, "When the ordinance was first enacted, its purpose was to reaffirm the constitutional values and the statutory obligation to guarantee student human rights institutionally, and to pay more attention to students' voices that might be overlooked in actual educational settings. However, looking back over the past ten years since the ordinance was implemented, contrary to its intent, the biased interpretation of the ordinance by Seoul's education administration has caused side effects that have reached a level destroying Seoul's educational environment, making it impossible to remain passive any longer."
He further stated, "Our children inherently possess inviolable rights to human dignity and all derived fundamental rights even without the ordinance. Such claims to rights come with the responsibility to guarantee others' rights, and if exercising one's rights infringes on others' rights, it must be restricted?this principle should have been taught in school education. However, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education under Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon has focused solely on students' claims to rights based on the Student Human Rights Ordinance, neglecting responsibilities as members of the community and the guarantee of others' right to learn. Ultimately, it bears the greatest responsibility for leading Seoul's educational ecosystem to a catastrophe by gagging teachers' authority to discipline."
In conclusion, the root cause of the fundamental problem is Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon's educational ideology, which has lost balance, and the Student Human Rights Ordinance is merely an effective means to solidify that distorted ideology.
The consistent stance of the People Power Party in the Seoul Metropolitan Council is that teachers' authority and student human rights are not conflicting values, and to further strengthen student human rights, the teachers' authority, which has the duty to protect student rights, must not be abandoned as it is now.
Perhaps unable to accept that the majority of citizens agree with this position, Superintendent Cho has taken to the streets, attempting to mislead the public with provocative propaganda and agitation. It is regrettable and disappointing as it confirms the current status and level of Seoul's educational administration, which ten million citizens trust and entrust.
Spokesperson Kim concluded, "To ensure that the education, which is the hundred-year plan for our children, is not biased toward one side and that students can grow into critical democratic citizens through proper education, political neutrality in educational administration has been institutionalized. However, Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon's political actions are worrisome, and although he claims to be progressive more than anyone else, his double standards in defending the Student Human Rights Ordinance?whose failures and side effects have been confirmed?regarding student human rights are astonishing."
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