by keith

editor/miriam

the "teacher training fever" seems to be gradually cooling down.

although from the outside world's perspective, the position of teacher is not only stable but also comes with two holidays a year, which can be said to be quite decent.

but in recent years, due to the continuous decline in birth rate, teachers' concerns have gradually emerged.

on the one hand, parents' demand for more sophisticated childcare has made teachers' work more and more onerous, so much so that a kindergarten in shanxi recently asked parents to swear: "don't be rude to teachers and don't be bad parents."

on the other hand, the decrease in the number of newborns has made it difficult for many schools to recruit students, and some areas have seen schools merged and closed.

in the future, what impact will the declining birthrate have on teachers' "iron rice bowl"? will this profession still be considered "popular" in the future? this is not only a problem we will face, but also a dilemma that the entire east asia will have to deal with.

for example, in taiwan province of my country, the profession of teacher has already undergone a relatively complete round of iterations and shocks.

difficulty in recruiting students, from kindergarten to university

since the 1980s, taiwan's birth rate has continued to decline and soon entered the threshold of a "low-birth" society.

you know, the changes brought about by changes in the population structure are like waves, and they will always spread from the bottom up to every level of the education system.

so when the number of newborns began to decrease, early childhood education in taiwan naturally became the first group to be affected.

after reaching its peak in 2003, the number of kindergartens in taiwan province began to decline precipitously.

among them, more than 400 private kindergartens were closed within five years, and the number of preschool teachers was almost halved in the same period of time.

afterwards, similar situations occurred in primary and secondary schools, and were completely irreversible:

as early as 2006, there were media reports that 566 primary schools in remote areas of taiwan province were facing closure and merger. by 2009, not only had the original problem not been resolved, but even the star primary schools in downtown taipei began to face difficulties in recruiting students.

as the number of new students entering school decreases year by year, the survival of the teaching staff will naturally become more and more difficult.

in a 2012 report by commonwealth magazine, in order to allow their schools to recruit enough students in the new semester, countless teachers in taiwan were forced to "fawn on the lower classes", namely:

universities spend money to set up scholarships for high schools to attract students; high schools set up cram schools to tutor junior high school students to increase enrollment rates;

junior high schools compete with each other and even make false accusations and slander each other because they are competing for the primary schools;

elementary school teachers visit parents of new students door to door before the start of school each year, either giving them school uniforms or a full set of stationery. some elementary schools even post recruitment notices directly on social media:

"urgently hiring a new student, and there are so many graduation gifts that they need to be loaded onto a truck."

some media regard all of the above as the complete “salesmanization” of teachers in taiwan.

in a report by the united daily news at the time, a private school teacher revealed that they would spend three months a year recruiting new students. they would be rewarded with several thousand taiwan dollars for each new student they brought in, and if they failed to do so, their year-end bonus would be deducted.

but as a primary school principal in kaohsiung said:

"if five out of ten children come, we can open an extra class, which means we can have an extra teacher and more funding for the class."

according to a survey report in 2015, 84% of teachers in taiwan province are worried that they will become "surplus personnel" who will be eliminated in the current wave of declining birth rates. the anxiety caused by the loss of their iron rice bowl has made survival the first goal of many teachers.

moreover, because there are too few students and too many teachers, the number of places for formal teaching positions is becoming increasingly limited. for example, in 2015, the taipei city government stopped recruiting elementary school teachers in order to balance the education budget.

this naturally gave rise to a large group of "wandering teachers" who shared the teaching pressure with existing full-time teachers.

as of 2020, on average one out of every seven teachers in taiwan's schools is a "substitute teacher" who does not have a full-time job.

however, because they sign part-time contracts, the salaries of these temporary education workers are generally low, their jobs are very unstable, and there is no guarantee of benefits such as pensions.

if they want to get a job, homeless teachers need to fight for their place and take the brutal regularization exam. in 2021, the new taipei city teacher recruitment exam had 2,000 people competing for 47 places, with an admission rate of only 2%.

finally, this year, the impact of the declining birthrate has fully radiated into university campuses:

it is estimated that seven universities in taiwan will close down in 2024. as a result, many doctoral teachers have been forced to substitute teach in primary and secondary schools to make a living.

under the impact of this long-term population decline, east asian teachers have lost not only their salaries and jobs, but also the status and respect they originally deserved.

this is particularly evident in japan and south korea.

perverse power relations

as we all know, japan and south korea are both countries with a distinct tradition of respecting teachers.

teachers in japan can share the title of "sir" with doctors, lawyers and politicians, while teachers in south korea have the reputation of being "role models for the nation."

however, when the wave of declining birth rates hit, and when the supply and demand relationship of educational resources gradually distorted as the number of newborns continued to decrease, the power relationship between teachers and students in japan and south korea began to reverse one after another.

specifically, in japan, in order to ensure that the increasingly scarce number of children receive a high-quality education, society has put too much work on the shoulders of teachers.

as education researcher masatoshi imo said, japanese teachers generally have "too many part-time jobs":

they not only have to teach on a daily basis, but also participate in student clubs, deal with school bullying, and be responsible for taking care of students during their rest time. sometimes they even have to deal with complaints from parents and the public late at night.

these numerous tasks have directly turned the once sacred campus into what teachers now call a "black-hearted workplace" and "overtime hell."

in a 2023 survey, 37% of teachers in japan's public junior high schools worked more than 80 hours of overtime per month, exceeding the so-called "death from overwork" overtime line.

one teacher said in an interview that he only had 64 seconds to eat lunch every day. some teachers died after teaching for 53 consecutive days. many more suffered from severe depression due to endless overtime work. the ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology stated in 2021 that a total of 10,944 teachers took leave to recuperate due to serious mental problems.

so why not add more teachers to share the burden?

one very important reason is that due to the student recruitment crisis caused by the declining birthrate, schools across japan are unwilling to expand their staff due to financial concerns and would rather focus on increasing the intensity of existing teachers.

after all, as former teacher kudo shoko complained: "teaching is a 'sacred profession', so self-sacrifice is taken for granted."

and when the "gentlemen" who used to be offered seats by the government are listed in the government's white paper as "occupations with a higher risk of death from overwork", people will naturally choose to stay away from them.

in recent years, teacher shortages have occurred in many parts of japan. at the same time, the number of people taking the country's teacher recruitment examination is decreasing year by year.

in comparison, the situation in south korea may be even worse.

as a country that places great emphasis on academic performance, koreans have always had high expectations for their children.

it’s just that in the past, this expectation could be equally shared among five or six children, but now, all the anxiety related to education falls on one child, which has also changed the delicate relationship between teachers and families.

since korean teachers have a tradition of corporal punishment of students in the past, in today's context of declining birth rates, "protecting students' growth and limiting teachers' power" has become the politically correct practice in the country's education sector since the 21st century, and a series of related regulations have been introduced.

basically, starting in 2010, as south korea's birth rate hit rock bottom, the country's teachers gradually became the absolute weak party in the "school-family" power structure:

students and their parents can cite various laws and regulations to complain and report teachers' behavior at will, while teachers cannot even carry out their normal work under the tight control of "prohibition of corporal punishment."

thus, a nationwide bullying campaign against educators that lasted for several years began:

in the first month of the implementation of the seoul student human rights ordinance, a female teacher tried to stop students from quarreling, but was scolded as "a bitch who meddles in other people's business, be careful to get beaten";

in jeonju, south korea, a third-grade elementary school student slapped the vice-principal five times, spat on him and cursed him. when the child's mother came to the school, she not only did not apologize, but continued to beat her son's head teacher.

a female teacher in busan was kicked by an eight or nine-year-old child for stopping students from playing in class, causing her sternum to fracture. she was hospitalized for three weeks.

......

they are insulted for providing education and cannot fight back when beaten. under this magical system, some teachers choose to wear "anti-sword uniforms" to work, some buy "teacher defendant liability insurance" in groups, and some become depressed, collapse, and even commit suicide due to the beatings and scoldings from students and the endless phone complaints and harassment from parents.

last july, triggered by the suicide of a 23-year-old young teacher, tens of thousands of south korean teachers took to the streets to demand better protection in their jobs.

according to the dong-a ilbo, south korea has also seen a huge wave of teacher resignations in the past two years, with the number of public elementary school teachers leaving reaching new highs.

it is true that east asia’s declining birthrate problem is still an unsolvable problem, and newborns in the future will indeed be treated as a “scarce commodity” and will be given extra protection.

however, this protection should not be based entirely on the exploitation of the teaching group.

after all, although teachers are great, they are also living people. they can make contributions to the cause of education, but they are far from giving up everything.

once the effort of teaching exceeds the upper limit of the job, once the burden of educating people breaks the spiritual threshold, then even the most stable job will no longer attract young people as before.

references:

the impact of declining birth rate! students dropped by 35%, teacher layoffs spread, and the education industry entered a dark decade

under the crisis of declining birthrate, how do teachers face the unemployment crisis and find a way to make a living again?

japan's "no teacher" crisis: faced with bullying and workload, shanda university teachers hate sex work?

why teachers? teachers leaving schools