Kim Man-gon's Education Forum Was the Administrative Director Happy Back Then?

It's been nearly 20 years since we parted ways. Let me tell you an old story. On a spring day etched in my fading memory, I was assigned as a teacher at a rural elementary school, where I met my second principal. The smell of alcohol always reeked from him, and there were even days when he openly spent the entire day from morning at a local bar. How did we manage? He was with a few pretentious "gentlemen of note" whose business cards were hardly worth anything.

After about two hours of class, a message came asking me to briefly step out. I pretended not to hear it, but the messenger kept coming. I had no choice but to go. I rushed out on my bicycle, and sure enough, he said, "Let's have a drink." It was a brazen scheme to make me an accomplice in drinking during class. I downed a drink in one go. Then I stood up and returned to school. I had become his accomplice as intended. This way I could be at ease with the children and conduct my class. I had to be in the classroom, and that principal needed me to be an accomplice.

Back then, there was no administrative office at the school. So who do you think handled administrative duties? Of course the vice principal did, and I handled the accounting. Following my senior's "advice," I covered the drinking expenses of that foolish principal and those petty gentlemen. What else could I do? I also heard stories of principals who worked with me and demanded that I collect tuition fees for textbooks that the government distributed for free. In those bleak times, we didn't know what to do sometimes, but even knowing, we lived through it suffering greatly. Perhaps those years of living that way became one of the conditions that brought about this current development?

Why was an administrative office created at schools? Was it to make it so principals didn't have to create accomplices? To drastically expand the number of administrative staff? To ensure that orders from the Provincial Office of Education and District Offices of Education were better communicated? No! The biggest reason was probably to allow teachers to focus solely on teaching.

There seems to be no shortage of misunderstandings. The principal should help the superintendent above, and the superintendent should help the provincial education chief. This is because the provincial education chief holds an important position of formulating and implementing high-level policies. Then, following that logic, shouldn't teachers help the principal? Students should help teachers too. Doesn't something seem strange?

After all, for whom are policies formulated and realized? For students! That's why every election, provincial education chief candidates shout that they will help students, parents, and teachers well. The provincial education chief himself commits that the principals will help teachers well, teachers will help students well, that education will be conducted this way, and that he will establish and implement such policies—swearing not to become a strange provincial education chief obsessed with exercising authority.

I remember the moment when the director came with a budget proposal created as a result of all-night discussions with the department heads, delighted to have understood what decision-making was. He was troubled by the fact that the budget should be doubled if requests were met, but in the end, he adjusted it well. I also remember how he shattered the practice of teachers requesting me for a budget needed for certain tasks, and how he watched with a smile as I pleaded with the teacher in charge.

Do you remember the fire safety banner that hung at the school gate? At first, everyone grumbled that we just needed to follow the fire department's official notice. But he went through the trouble of holding a school-wide contest, created a banner with the slogan submitted by a second-grade student, hung it up, neatly folded it, and gave it to the boy's mother. That mother said she watched the school gate without fail every day that winter and gave her tearful thanks, and the director conveyed that emotion to me in such a touching way.

Director! I have carefully kept one phrase—your "conclusion"—that said, "I finally realized that our administrative office plays a great role in our school's education." I hope the education officials in this region will deeply recognize that this natural and beautiful perspective is the reason you are now overseeing larger responsibilities. Having an administrative director made each day I spent working as a principal a source of happiness for me.