Opinions might be divided over whether they (they가 누구를 가르키는거죠?) must not allow students to know the teacher's political and
social viewpoints in the classroom. People of various ages and from different
walks of life may take diverse positions on this controversial issue. Personally,
I agree with the statement that knowing about teacher's political view has a
negative effect on students for the following reasons.
To begin with, teachers should not
let students to know teacher's their
political position, because students are vulnerable to external
influence. If students are exposed to the subjective political thought,
they could be attracted to the thought easily. When I was a middle school
student, there was a big political conflict in Korea. One of my
history teachers was so enthusiastic about his
own political view. Before history class started, the teacher always talked
about his opinion about the political issue and expressed that people should
view the issue as he did. Under the influence of him, some of my friends formed their political thought which were the same with the teacher's. Actually,
both of the two different viewpoints
about the issue were not wrong. Because of him, my friends were forced to think
of the other part of people as was
wrong. If the teacher had not forced them to have the same point of view,
they could have stand stood at one part
on their own will. This clearly shows that students are
susceptible to teachers’ words.
On top of that, students would also feel uncomfortable with
teachers talking about his or
her political point of view. The number of political viewpoints would be the same as the number of people
in a class. So, many students who do not stand with a teacher's
political standpoint could be defensive to the teacher. Moreover, they could
even reject to take the teacher’s class. A few years ago, I had a chance to
read an op-ed piece which was related to the topic. It described the result of
a survey conducted by Seoul National University social science researchers with
more than 500 random people living in Seoul as
respondents. According to the survey, more than 60 percent of them
responded that they had an experience to be forced to follow someone's
political view. Among them, about 90 percent of them felt unpleasant
from them. The respondents added that they even have had physical or emotional conflicts with others
due to the difference of political viewpoint. This clearly proves
that students could feel unpleasant to get to know their teacher's social view.
To sum up with, since
students are not only susceptible to teachers’
social point of view, but they can also feel uncomfortable. For these reasons, I conclude that teachers should not
be allowed to show their political view to students.