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Altercation over “Teacher Appointment and Dismissal Right” between the Government and the Ruling Party

Altercation over “Teacher Appointment and Dismissal Right” between the Government and the Ruling Party

Posted August. 20, 2004 22:12,   

The Uri Party and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development held a meeting on Friday in the National Assembly but could not agree on the issue of whether to turn over the power to appoint teachers from school foundations to school principals. Therefore, it is unclear if the private school law will be approved in the National Assembly next month.

For three hours starting from 7:30 a.m. in the meeting, 386-generation lawmakers of the Uri Party and Ahn Byong-young, deputy prime minister and Education Ministry minister, were engaged in a heated dispute on this issue. 386-generation means people who are in thirties, entered college in the 1980’s and were born in the 1960’s.

A lawmaker at the meeting said, “We had a philosophical discussion on how to view private school foundations and how to solve their problems. It even developed into an ideological discussion at the end.”

Cho Bae-sook, the 5th Policy Meditation Council chief, left the place, saying, “There is nothing for briefing.” The Uri Party lawmakers, including Chung Bong-joo, Lee In-young, Baek Won-woo, and Ryu Gi-hong, also closed their mouths, saying, “There is nothing to say.” Deputy Prime Minister Ahn also left the meeting about two hours after it started under an excuse of attending another event.

It was later heard that the 386-generation Uri Party lawmakers said that “the private school foundations are the nursery of irrationality and corrupted selfishness.” They insisted, “The irrationality of the private school foundations, that has been repeated so far, can be fundamentally resolved only when their powers are distributed.”

On the other hand, the Education Ministry was known to have expressed its stance that the school foundations, as core body of actual school management, should at least have the right to appoint teaching staff, and the irrationality of the school foundations can be minimized through systematic measures including opening the teaching staff appointment procedures to the public.

Ahn was known to have said in the meeting, “Lawyers said that there is a jurisprudential conflict to let a school principal who is appointed by the school foundation appoints teaching staff again.” It was heard that he was confronted by the 386-generation lawmakers asking to explain what the conflict is.

The 386-generation lawmakers even showed rough responses, saying, “There is no meaning to have this discussion as long as the ministry does not change its stance. Let’s break this meeting here.” However, they decided to resume the meeting later and wrapped it up. A lawmaker, who asked to stay anonymous, expressed his “will,” saying, “We cannot yield in this issue of transferring the appointment right to principals. It will be done at the end as we suggest. Once this issue is solved, the other issues on this bill will be agreed without any problem at full gallop.”



Seong-Chul Hong Hoon Lee sungchul@donga.com dreamland@donga.com