Repeal ordinance on students` human rights

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education is known to have requested a review of the ordinance on student human rights passed by the Seoul Metropolitan Council. The request wants the council to put the ordinance to a vote within 10 days, and support of more than two-thirds of councilors in attendance can pass it. The ordinance, which stresses the rights of students and ignores their duties and responsibilities, shows the recklessness of the enactment as schools are plagued by bullying and sexual molestation.

Schools in the country are in no situation to seek freedom of assembly by students, ban on discrimination against homosexuals, and freedom of attire and hairdo as stipulated by the ordinance. Human rights abuses among peers such as bullying and violence abound in schools. The ordinance have often made things harder on teachers, who have enough difficulty in teaching students they find unable tough to control. The ordinance`s ban on the use of indirect corporal punishment and inspection of student belongings such as lethal weapons or obscene materials is tantamount to asking that schools not discipline perpetrators of school violence. Such a provision will make students believe that their freedom and rights are the most valuable and can defy all school regulations, turning schools into a lawless world.

Though students are in a developmental state, they must be responsible for school violence. Excessive tolerance can aggravate the situation. To fight school violence, which is growing more brutal and whose perpetrators are getting younger, the government is seeking to lower the age of criminal prosecution from 14 to 12. A court in Florida, in the U.S. has invoked the right to self-defense in finding a student who killed his tormenting bully not guilty. This is a wake-up call for school violence. Students in Korea should be reminded that violence against peers is not mischief but a crime.

The Korean Teachers and Educational Workers` Union, which has kept mum for a long time, issued a statement Sunday, saying, “The fundamental way to deal with school violence is to raise student human rights.” The left-leaning union apparently thinks that schools suffer from violence due to lack of awareness of human rights by teachers and students. Does the union have an alternative to promote human rights of the victims of school violence? Teachers affiliated with the union will probably know that the decline in teacher authority is further stoking school violence.

Leftist forces who sought the ordinance should admit to losing a sense of balance. Those who devised the ordinance must review it from the perspective of the victims of school violence. The Seoul Metropolitan Council must vote against the ordinance if it is put to a vote again.