In case you ever wondered what really happense

At school, I am on a 'need to know basis', not by virtue of the heavy classification that that the photocopier password falls under, but because it takes almost more time than anyone can afford just to explain the things that are extremely relevant to me on a day to day basis.  So never mind the little things, the asides, the office jokes, the latest gossip.  That just doesn't make it to my ears.

Do you already see the exception coming?  Yes?  Let me fill you in then.

When the lunch bell goes I wait an extra ten minutes to head down, mostly because bells aren't the boss of me.  Wednesday I was broken from the dead stare at my computer by the head teacher suggesting very much that I head down to eat.  It takes only a minute to zero in on the art teacher crying at her desk.  The other female teachers are assuming stress relieving positions and I do not need a Korean vocabulary larger than 35 words to know that 'you should go eat lunch' means 'you should not watch this teacher cry.'  I make vamoose into my middle name, Vamoose.

Lately at school, there has been a discipline problem.

And as these things work, on the way back from lunch my favourite Nice Man P.E. teacher begins to give me the lay of the land these days as he sees it.

Whatever institution decides these sorts of things has decided that hitting kids is now illegal, both with foreign objects and the human body.  That means no sticks, folding chairs, tazers, elbows or ear pulls.  This is one of those things that I knew was true some places, but didn't know if it had been applied like a heavy blanket over the peninsula or if they were "just talking about Seoul".  Now unless you are the one person who google analytics tells me reads this blog from somewhere in the Balkans, you probably are on board with the 'no hitting' thing. (Sorry to my one reader in the Balkans, I have made a joke at your expense with no real idea of how often/hard/creative you are in your corporal punishment.)  Put that aside for a moment.  Basically what has happened is that the traditional form of classroom discipline has been cast away and there is nothing to replace it.  There is so much nothing to replace it that last week there was a meeting to talk about insituting a new form of punishment for the students.  The meeting found that officially no one has any idea.

So the proffessional teacher with  more than a decade's worth of experience asked me: how can we discipline students?  I laid out how things were done back in my day as best I could and while he was very inerested he brought up a few reasons why he thought it just wouldn't fly over here.

Lots of kids go to academies or cram schools after they're done at school.  You can't make kids stay after school because if they miss these acadamies their parents get ulta pissed and complain to the school.

Parents work a lot and they work late.  This may translate to any or all of the above: a. they don't have a lot of time to talk to their kids.  b. they don't know how their kids are behaving in school c. they don't have time for parent-teacher conferences (which I suggested)

Parents are having only one or two kids, where as it used to be the norm to have many more.  He lamented the unwillingness for parents these days to believe that their child would behave badly.  He feels that children are coddled much more than they used to be.

Everything he said I had heard said before.  Just never all at once.  So it seems plausible that this is one of the ways things are.  But I have to admit now that I have grown uncomfortable talking with way, without making anything up or even embelleshing.  I am reminded why I leave the straight facts to others.  So you'll have to forgive me if I duck out early.