There was recently a discussion in ESL DAILY about disciplinary issues in hagwons. One blogger commented we are not allowed to lay a finger on troublesome students while the Korean teachers whack them frequently. I instantly connected to that cynical remark.

Hagwons usually practice extraordinary renditions of miscreant students. The ESL teacher is ordered to send them to a senior Korean teacher who will whack them sensitively. That previous sentence is meant to be funny.

I once mildly administered my own hand to a hagwon disciplinary rod. Boy it hurt! The Korean teacher will lay it on multiple times.


Many a time my fingers have itched to seize a brat, almost always a boy, and drub him. But in my heart of heart I have never meant to administer what is routine almost a past time with most Korean teachers.

As hagwons become more cut throat, this environment will get worse. Hagwons must all the time appeal to their students first and then their parents who get the feedback. That might seem to contradict the above. But Korean children are macho for physical punishment. They think it normal.

These days hagwons are increasingly videotaping classroom instruction. When I attended Teachers College in New Zealand, I was instructed in the psychology of positive and negative reinforcement. I tried to sensibly practice it. Under a videotape camera that is ill advised. You never know who is watching you. I was told the moment a student showed any kind of distress regardless of his shocking preceding behavior; I must cuddle and soothe that child. Sometimes I suppressed my own feelings, by whispering in the child's ears that he was a rat while I cuddled him.

Some Korean parents are absolutely dreadful in their demands on ESL teachers and indulgence of their children. They are the minority but they have all the power. We are for them just a bar of soap.

I could handle it better when the physical punishments were for actual extreme misbehavior. Children especially boys do try on the teachers until they have reached the limits of bad behavior. When I first came to South Korea in 2001, the boys of my hagwon had got into the habit of tossing their school footwear into the air. They had already broken one pair of my glasses and came close to breaking another. I could see this wasn't going to stop under gentle admonishments. So I informed the female Korean teachers. I tried to restrict the misdeed to one boy. But immediately of course the students named all the delinquents. Modern children unlike my generation are unfailing narks. They were lined up in front of the school and the awful deed, two sharp blows with a hard object, were administered to a brief whimper on the hands. That misbehavior instantly stopped.


Regretfully, many hagwons physically punish for routine school lesson errors. One of my hagwons came to increasingly distress and revolt me by this practice. The Korean teachers take their cues from the hagwon directors. This school director was a lovely kind man except for this perverse weakness. He would give back marked papers and then lay it on hard to every child in the classroom. Then at the end of the class period, he would lay it on again to half a dozen boys. One big boy would nonchalantly chat to his mates while his hand was being swiped. A young female teacher at the hagwon, Miss Lim, used to really get into the swing of it. She would come into class with her long stick and marked papers. Then while the rest of the class quailed she would deliver the blows to the luckless ones. I once watched her play with the senior boys a popular Korean school game. The boys struck her wrists with their finger nails to draw as many blood marks as possible while she moaned.

Physical punishment was not usually practiced on the senior students. They would refuse to put out their hands and would complain bitterly if it was tried on them.

Hagwons confirmed my suspicion that South Korea skipped the twentieth century while Japan never left it. A hundred years ago, physical punishment for classroom mistakes was standard in western schools, at least in the English speaking ones.

Hagwons are generally unruly and difficult places to learn or teach. The high hopes of South Korean Presidents of an English speaking student population within a decade have not been and are unlikely to be achieved. Instead I am hearing that English is being supplanted with various exotic Asian forms. I suppose in South Korea it is called Kinglish. I personally call that a cop out. I.E. a cover up for a global failure in achieving a universal global language.

I have heard that the ESL teaching results are higher in North Korea! That does not really surprise me. Communist countries have historically excelled in advancing education standards. They after all profess belief in elevating their children not just indulging them and making money out of them. I know that is an old fashioned way of thinking.

The western Communist countries were able to achieve these results while banning corporal punishment. I may be stupidly naïve. But I would love to find out that corporal punishment is banned in schools in North Korea.

Goethe