Over the past few weeks, incidents coming out of Kaohsiung involving teacher mental health concerns and the soaring popularity of the South Korean drama Teach You a Lesson have reignited public debate over protecting students’ rights to education and the erosion of teachers’ classroom authority. The discussion also touches on broader questions about school governance and institutional responsibility, and how responsibility should be fairly distributed across the education system.
On the front lines, among the greatest challenges for teachers today is how to approach handling students with emotional or behavioral difficulties — dealing and communicating with the parents is also challenging. The demands of striking the right balance while always being held to blame and lacking adequate institutional support leave many teachers exhausted and reluctant to stay in the profession.
At the core of education are principles of students’ rights to learn and teachers’ rights to teach. These should not be in opposition to one another, but rather be mutually reinforcing, and aligned with the expectations of parents. However, the adversarial dynamic that sometimes emerges between teachers and families often presents itself when students are struggling with emotional or behavioral challenges. Under the current system, teachers are frequently unable to manage these cases effectively on their own and must seek parental involvement. However, when the parents themselves are overwhelmed or unprepared, the situation can become even more difficult. This is not a matter of blame. The students are young and not deliberately misbehaving, and the parents might lack the capacity to respond. Nevertheless, without sufficient institutional support, teachers are left in an impossible position.
There are many factors that could be behind student difficulties. They could stem from challenges in emotion regulation and impulse control; be related to stress responses or difficulties adapting; or result from a lack of family and social support. In these cases, it is unrealistic to expect teachers alone to address these complex needs, particularly when they must simultaneously manage the learning of an entire class.
Given that funding for education, science and culture is constitutionally protected and expected to increase progressively, I propose three key policy recommendations:
First, establish structured training programs in mental health and psychological well-being for teachers at all levels. As a necessary form of professional development, these training hours should be formally recognized and remunerated.
Second, in addition to the tiered school counseling system, a formal collaboration mechanism should be created between schools, and psychiatric and mental health services. Qualified specialists should conduct on-site assessments of students experiencing significant difficulties, using a framework that takes social factors into account. This must not medicalize student behavior, but enable early intervention to prevent escalation into more serious problems and creating further harm.
Third, schools should establish dedicated in-house social work positions specializing in mental health. These professionals would support engagement with parents from a social work perspective and, when necessary, facilitate family-based interventions. This would help teachers manage the often-difficult dynamics with families while ensuring that support extends beyond the classroom.
Lin Jin-jia is a psychiatrist.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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