Tomorrow is Teacher's Day, so we're going to get our teacher a plant. Someone suggested getting her a cactus, since she's not all smiles and honey like the other teachers; she's sort of prickly and impatient at times. But damn funny.

A coworker told me yesterday that the government is considering moving Teacher's Day to February, the end of the winter semester, to take the pressure off the parents. You see, May is at the beginning of a new semester, so kids will have their teachers for several months after Teacher's Day. And that would be bad, because their parents might not have enough money to give a good bribe to the teacher.

It's customary to give teachers gifts on Teacher's Day. But this tradition has grown into a bribery system. Typically, parents will give a book to their kid's teacher. Stuffed inside the book is an envelope of money.

I asked my coworker, "Does that really make a difference?" "Yes!" she immediately replied. The bigger the bribe, I guess, the better the teacher treats the student, taking especial care that she or he learns the lesson well, etc.

This occurs in both private and public schools. In my coworker's private high school, students brought the teacher gifts, which the teacher would open in front of the class. This is considered quite rude in Korea, as it leads to gift comparison. Also, the school would "appoint" well-off parents (going off their occupations listed on the student's file) to a "fund-raising" committee. Each parent would then have to donate money (my coworker said her parents donated about $500 one semester).

My coworker lived in Britain for a few years, and said that the Korean immigrant community there at the time caused a stir by applying that custom to the British school system. The British teachers gave the money back.