The Collapse of Teachers' Authority Isn't the Students' Problem

I often hear that "teachers' authority has collapsed."

But the moment people say this, many of them too easily look for the cause in the students. They say the classroom fell apart because students are ruder than before, less patient, and refuse to recognize authority.

But I think that interpretation is merely comfortable and easy, and far from the truth.

It wasn't students who made today's classroom. It was the adults who designed and maintained the structure. Teachers, the public education system, parents, and the whole society that crafts policy above them are the agents who created today's reality.

Students are merely beings thrown into that structure.

So the moment we blame students for the collapse of teachers' authority, the problem goes unsolved.

Because it ends with offloading the responsibility onto those in the weakest position.

If anything, within today's structure, the ones taking the longest and heaviest beating are the students too.

This isn't a problem confined to certain regions. Seoul is no different at its core. People assume schools in Seoul must somehow be different, but in reality there's only a difference in the density of resources and the surrounding environment; the quality problem of the system itself doesn't disappear.

Which means this: even if you perform exceptionally well, the structural reward isn't large, while standing out or causing problems easily leads to loss.

In a structure like this, it's unreasonable to keep expecting above-average dedication, experimentation, and a strong sense of responsibility. There may be people who hold on out of a personal sense of mission. But a system shouldn't run on goodwill.

In the end, today's public education

is closer to a structure where meeting a good person means you got lucky,

and otherwise something you simply have to endure.

And in a system like this, private education inevitably grows.

To say private education grew only because of parental anxiety or overheated competition is to see only half the picture.

The more fundamental reason is that the market responds to demand faster than public education does.

When parents and students want something, private education immediately builds a product, and when satisfaction drops, it gets weeded out. Competition pulls quality up, and the pressure to survive raises the density of the service.

So the fact that private education ends up providing better education is not a coincidence but a structural result.

It's not because anyone is kinder, nor because anyone has a deeper educational philosophy.

It's simply that the system is built to work that way.

The problem starts here.

Better education exists,

but the capital to access it is unevenly distributed.

At this point, society often reacts in the wrong direction.

It calls for cutting private education, for regulating it, and talks as if suppressing the exam market would solve the problem.

But that approach can't change reality.

Because the demand for good education itself doesn't go away.

People can hire more expensive tutors, route around it with superior information, or pull out into overseas education altogether.

As always, the ones who best exploit the gaps in regulation are those who already have capital and networks.

Conversely, the ones hit hardest

are the people who, with what limited money they had, were at least getting some help from private education.

So regulating private education is not a policy that creates equality.

More often, instead of erasing the gap, it's closer to a policy that makes the gap less visible.

The surface gets tidied up, but the actual inequality goes further underground and grows more cunning.

So what society really needs to do

is not to suppress good education,

but to make good education spread more widely.

It lies in how to supply, more cheaply, more broadly, and more equally, the elements private education has demonstrated: high-density educational resources, fast feedback, quality improvement through competition, and a personalized approach.

In other words, what's needed is not regulation but democratization.

The democratization of good education.

Talking about "fairness" while leaving intact a structure in which only children from wealthy homes get better explanations, more refined feedback, and higher-density learning management, is hollow.

Real fairness doesn't come from dragging everyone down.

It comes from making more people able to access the high-quality resources at the top.

I believe the problem of teachers' authority is ultimately connected to this point as well.

The reason teachers aren't respected can't be found in the attitudes of individual students alone.

Respect doesn't arise from coercion.

It forms when there is a trustworthy role, a meaningful function, and a quality you can accept as reasonable.

In a structure like today's, where public education has lost real trust, parents are anxious, and students feel the more important education happens outside of school, you can't prop up teachers' authority on its own.

Teachers' authority isn't restored by slogans.

It recovers only when trust in the entire education system recovers alongside it.

In the end, there's only one question.

How do we keep people from being pushed out of quality education simply because they have no money?

How do we make public education, at the very least, "a system that is trustworthy by default"?

If we can't answer this question, all that's left is every individual fending for themselves.

Households with money find an escape route; households without learn resignation.

And society ends up layering on more and more moral language so as not to see that gap.

But a fresh coat of paint doesn't change the structure.

It's a problem of the structure the adults built.

And if we can't change that structure, the options left to anyone who wants good education grow ever simpler.

Hold on at a steep price,

or leave altogether.

A structure in which a lack of money lands you in a wholly different tier of education is hard to call normal.

But accessibility alone is not enough.

Education doesn't get better on its own just because you leave the door open. Without competition, quality eventually stalls. In a structure where places that teach well and places that teach badly are treated the same, the motivation to do better can't survive for long either.

Everyone should be able to access good education. At the same time, within that access, quality competition among schools, teachers, and educational institutions must clearly stay alive. Good education should earn greater rewards, and bad education should either improve or be weeded out. Only then does the overall level rise.

Competition without accessibility turns education into a privilege,

and accessibility without competition drags education down to a leveled-down mediocrity.

European education models, such as France's, are worth referencing within this balance, at least on the accessibility side.

That said, the model itself can't be taken as the answer wholesale. Education must be open to everyone, but at the same time it must be a structure in which better education survives.