School politics

And here we arrive at Thursday once again. The day that is filled with DVD watching and Delta Sand. No, we don't know what that is either, but we just consider it a break for us. Any activity where small children get shipped off to another enterprise is looked upon favourably - we don't care what happens down there in the depths of the second floor.

It should be noted that what is to follow is not complaining, whinging, or ranting. It is merely a comment on the corrupt nature of Korean hagwons - or at least the one that I work for. But I've heard stories of far worse than I am experiencing so I can only assume the set up at my school is pretty standard. Anyhow, as a foreign teacher - and therefore a sought after employee - I get paid a disproportionate amount of money for what is generally an easy job, so what do I have to complain about? But perhaps this is a part of the problem.

Our school is located on the fourth floor of the building. The school owns the floor so there isn't any concern of the school not being able to pay their rent. And this is an issue, for there are alleged financial problems going on at the school at the moment, resulting in the Korean teachers being paid late for the sixth month in a row. This certainly causes some tensions in the staff room. The foreign teachers are all getting paid on time, but without us, there is no school. So maybe we're not suffering the financial problems since it's in their interests to keep us on side. They would be stupid to turn a blind eye to the fact that Korea is begging for foreign teachers, and that we can all get other jobs at the click of a finger (or button on worknplay.com). The sufferings we bear are those that we encounter in the Teacher's Room.

Now I say "alleged financial problems", because in the short amount of time that I've worked here I've been - what I thought was reliably - informed several times by the vice principle that the drama is over and all money problems have been sorted. But we, the foreign teachers, were paid on the 10th this month, and nearly two weeks on, the Korean teachers remain unpaid. The number of murmers of "I've had enough" that I've heard going round is far too many, especially considering that there are only five Korean teachers. In actual fact, one of them is leaving in December, and at least one other is seriously looking for another job.

The school has had several other issues in the last twelve months, with management changing several times and scandals going on at the top (I've heard rumours of drunkenness at work...affairs...) This has unsurprisingly had a detrimental effect on the school: last year they had an intake of 80; this year only 30. For those of you with poor mental arithmetic capabilities, that's over a 50% drop in numbers. Despite this being a particularly expensive school, half of the classrooms are being rented out and many of my classes have just two or three students in them.

The new vice principle has come in and seemingly turned a school with a bad name around, and is certainly hoping for an increase in intake come the start of the next school year in March. But in order to do this, she has had to suck up big style to parents, cater to their every whim, and make life more difficult for the teachers. Parents are now given 'weekly plans', where every class is planned out in advance, supposedly to the minute, and homework is clearly stated so that they know exactly what is going on. There are special homework books where the elementary students are supposed to blindly write out a dialogue from their text book, memorise it, and get tested on it at school the next day. As pointless an exercise as this is, this is just another measure to ensure that the parents know exactly what happens in the classroom and what their little angels have to do at home.

Maybe this doesn't sound too unreasonable. But once we add in the fact that there are hidden cameras in every classroom that parents are able to watch on at home, we start to believe we're getting in the realms of extreme. In every staff meeting we're told that we have to give up our breaks in order to check on the children, to at least give the impression we're taking an active interest in their well-being. Of course we don't want children fighting each other to the death, and we want to make sure they're ok when they've fallen down the stairs and gouged their eye out. But we need to take breaks, or we'd go crazy -- if we haven't done so already. In the last two weeks extra meetings have even been scheduled for our post-lunch break where the foreign teachers and Korean teachers all get together for a 'coffee break' where we talk about every student invidually. Everything that gets mentioned gets written down in a log book which then goes home to the parents.

With such controlling mothers overshadowing school policies (and several of these opinionated women often come into school to voice let the school know of their power tripping dispositions), it is no wonder that I work in a school full of spoilt children. The kind that don't understand the concept of 'waiting their turn', or the kind that take other people's things without asking, or the kind that sulk when things don't go their way - or worse - whinge. But when you have mixed ability classes just because the children are cousins, but they don't even like each other in the first place and spend the whole lesson fighting with one another, you wonder if the children are there to learn English, or to adhere to the ignorance of the parents. Of course, the latter.