Students, teachers stress more talk and caring atmosphere in schoolsThe following is the last of a series of articles on school violence brought into the public spotlight following recent student suicides. ― Ed.A Seoul-based middle school has seen the number of incidents of school violence fall from five to one last year as a result of a three-year effort to reach out to troubled students ― both bullies and those being bullied. It is a typical public school in Korea, under the same stressful sys

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and the Education Ministry clashed over the controversial ordinance on students’ rights on Thursday as the ministry sought legal action to prevent its implementation.As soon as the Seoul Metropolitan Government proclaimed the ordinance in the name of SMOE chief Kwak No-hyun on Thursday morning, the education ministry filed a suit with the Supreme Court. “We will support schools to effectively implement the ordinance so that every student’s dignity and r

Oh Dong-chan, pharmacy professor of Seoul National University, has been chosen as one of the early career scientists of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, an internationally renowned research foundation, SNU said Wednesday. Oh is expected to receive $715,000 for the next five years in funding for his research on microbes in relation to drug use, according to the school. “The research on discovering new antibiotic compounds based on microbes is promising … on discovering antibiotics from natura

Teachers call for effective alternative discipline for student misconductThis is the second of a series of articles on school violence brought into the public spotlight following recent student suicides. ― Ed.A 28-year-old middle school teacher who reported an in incident of violence to the school’s teacher in charge of student discipline received a shocking response. “He first asked me back, ‘Did the student break something? If not, deal with the case by yourself,’” she said, declining to be na

A prominent U.S. scholar in second-language education has proposed a method of learning English which emphasizes reading, running counter of traditional way based on grammar. “There has been a lot of suffering in English class when you were learning a foreign language, and it was unnecessary,” said Stephen Krashen, emeritus professor of education at the University of Southern California. He remarked at a lecture to Korean parents on optimal English education in Seoul on Monday that easy language