Late in July of 2023, protests came in waves in South Korea after the sudden death of a 23-year-old elementary school teacher. According to the country’s Education Ministry and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the teacher was found dead in her first-grade classroom on July 18. The cause of her death was ruled as unknown, until it was revealed that the teacher “had been bombarded by complaints from parents,” according to the BBC, which eventually led to severe depression and her untimely death. 

      Unfortunately, deaths like hers are all too common – 100 more Korean teachers have died under the same circumstances. Teachers are being mistreated left and right, and nobody is doing anything about it. 

     According to The National Education Association, violence and harassment towards teachers has gone up exponentially since the pandemic. “One-third of teachers experienced at least one incident of verbal harassment or threat of violence from students during the first full pandemic school year, and 14 percent were physically attacked.” This statistic definitely has not gone unnoticed by teachers; the source continues that in a survey, 43 percent of teachers said they wanted to quit their jobs.

     It’s not even just students – teachers are subject to verbal threats and harassment from parents and guardians. Edweek.org reports that twenty-nine percent of teachers and 42 percent of administrators were the victims of this bullying, and it is not okay in the slightest. 

  As a parent, what makes you think that you have the right to talk down to teachers for things that aren’t their faults? Does your child have an ‘E’ in geometry? Ask them if they’re doing their homework.  Did your child somehow get detention? Then ask the administration why. Don’t just assume your kid is being attacked by some sort of monster – believe it or not, your precious angels are capable of acting up and misbehaving. Edweek.org says that physical violence towards teachers occurred most commonly in PreK through sixth grade, whereas we’d probably assume it occurs in high school.

       And, although this is a huge problem throughout the world, there really isn’t anything being done about this. According to the president of the National Education Association, Becky Pringle, “While the sources and motivations behind violence in schools vary greatly, the solutions are clear as day—more staff, more training, and more attention to mental health needs. And yet, schools are not given the funding needed to hire, train, and retain necessary staff at their schools like counselors and social workers.”

     So, what can we do about this issue? Pringle adds, “We need to address the mental health needs of students and educators, as well as school staff shortages – both of which undermine the learning and growth of our students and the safety of our educators.” 

     Teachers should not have to be hypervigilant while trying to do their jobs, nor should they have to be yelled at by parents for things they aren’t to blame for. Educators deserve basic respect, and when they are not given that courtesy, another class has lost their teacher for good, exchanging their role as an educator for that of a nauseating statistic.