Big Giant Rant About Work

I've been trying to avoid being negative on here or writing anything very specific about work but I have got to get this out of my system. However, before that, it's Friday! Yay! That means two days of unstructured free time! I don't know what I'll be doing but I will attempt to find joyous discoveries to share with you! I promise to be more cheery and fun in upcoming posts.

Yesterday at work the subject of a particular child who I do not teach came up yet again. Almost daily two of the teachers complain about her behavior and abilities in class. It turns out that they have seen clear evidence that she is abused at home. One teacher has seen the scars and was prompted to review the student's work during a test because when she brought it up the student had gotten blood on the test.

Apparently it is still culturally acceptable to hit your children in Korea. I have not heard this from any native Korean source, only the other teachers, one of whom is a Korean who was raised in the U.S.. The teachers seem to feel that because it is not their country or culture they have no recourse regarding evidence of child abuse and that it absolves them of any responsibility. I do my best to accept that cultural differences are not a bad thing and am, frankly, working far harder to understand and accommodate Korea than any of the other instructors as far as I can tell but I draw the line at child abuse.

I will grant that if abuse is still legal and culturally accepted there is little the teachers could do but I proposed to the teacher, who was most vocal in complaints about this student, that he should consider what would happen if a student died as a result of the abuse. His answer was that he would not feel responsible at all. I said that he should, minimally, actually inform the directors of the school (which noone has done) so that it is recorded somewhere. Should the decision that nothing can be done be left in the hands of a 22 year old from Nowhere, Middle America or someone who actually understands the culture and has had more than a few fleeting years of adult experience?

It frustrates me to no end that the teachers complain about this girl's behavior without ever considering (or, at least, verbally acknowledging) that it might be the abuse that is causing her to act out and not that she gets hit at home as a result of that kind of behavior. Let us not even dignify the implied idea that a child can actually deserve to be hit. I know it is hard to avoid attributional bias, especially when a child is really poorly behaved, but I am utterly amazed that they have not expressed any sympathy for this girl.

I am often torn about expressing my opinions because they are strong and I know they are not always correct but even in going over the conversation in my mind I don't see a flaw in my position, which is merely that if the teachers see evidence of abuse they should inform one of the administrators because the administrators are more familiar with the culture and, should something more grievous occur, there would some record of it. This seems blatantly obvious to me. Am I incorrect? Is it "obvious" to me because I have a more thoughtful and empathic personality? Is it "obvious" because I'm older? These are not rhetorical, I invite input on this.

I am not really making friends at work. I'm not making enemies but it is clear that I won't spend a lot of my private time socializing with coworkers because, although they have many positive attributes, we don't share much other than the language and displacement. There are three new teachers coming within the next few weeks and they are all male and, according to one source, all have Korean girlfriends. I find the Korean girlfriend thing a bit trite at this point.