[One Thousand Characters a Day] Professor Kim Nuri's 'Competitive Education is Barbaric' <4>

Editor's NoteIf doctors deal with the human body, teachers deal with the human mind. Since they handle human psychology, emotions, sensitivity, and cognitive abilities, and influence children's growth, experts who have undergone advanced learning and training are needed. Professor Kim Nuri emphasizes, "For new education?education that does not compete, critical education, education that draws out children's potential, education that nurtures mature democrats, and education that cultivates a sense of dignity?a new kind of teacher is needed, and therefore the teacher training process must also change." Word count: 1069 characters.

Korean teachers are authoritarian but lack authority. Here, the term 'authoritarian' does not refer to the attitude of individual teachers. Naturally, there are differences in disposition among teachers. Some are more liberal, while others are stricter and more controlling. This is not about individuals but about the authoritarian tradition embedded in our educational culture and practices.

Thus, Korean teachers still act within an authoritarian culture but have lost their authority. At some point, teachers ceased to be mentors to children and came to be seen as providers of educational services. Especially compared to star instructors in the private education market, they have been treated as 'low-quality service providers.'

Teachers are even subject to teacher competency development evaluation satisfaction surveys. Surveys are conducted on students' satisfaction with teachers' guidance and parents' satisfaction with overall school life and school management. Teachers are educational service providers, and students and parents are consumers of these services. By investigating customer satisfaction from the consumer's perspective, teachers' authority has been completely undermined. The recent issue of malicious complaints from parents is a tragic aspect of the marketization of education. The abuse of service providers by consumers has been distorted and appeared in schools as well.

The rapid decline of teachers' authority seems to be a phenomenon arising from the intersection of parents' distorted understanding of democracy and the market-oriented educational view of neoliberalism. Koreans, liberated from military dictatorship, lacked the understanding that democracy is a system based on civic duties and participation, and excessively pursued their private desires. Within the framework of competitive education, parents acted as consumers of educational services, naturally prioritizing only their own children.

Another important factor causing the difference in 'authority' between Korean and German teachers is the stark gap in teachers' political citizenship. German teachers are 'political citizens' with powerful social influence, whereas Korean teachers are 'political commoners' with no social influence. The issue of teachers' political citizenship is very important, yet Koreans still hold extremely outdated views on this matter.

－Kim Nuri, Competition Education is Barbarism, Haenaem Publishing, 18,500 KRW