Impressions

OK, well the first 1/3 of my year is almost done, and I figured it's about time to give you some of my serious impressions about Korea. But first, take a look at this letter a student wrote to a college admissions officer after his interview (all of the spacing is actually how it looked). I guess I shouldn't make fun of my kids so much, but sometimes they just leave themselves vulnerable to attack:

Dear Mr. ----

Hellow?

My name is Lee(Roy)Kim, the smile man.

I am a student that is passionate to go to your school, -------.

I am really sorry that my reply is late.

anyway,

Because I knew that this school was one of the hardest and the best school to attend, I was very nervous before the interview was held. Like it's reputaitions the interview questions were stunning, "How do you learn?"

At first I did not know where to start my response, I would like to thank you for explaining me how to find a way to answer this question.

After the interview, I knew that I would be thrilled to attend this school if I get a chance.

I hope to see you again when I go to the school tour this winter.

Sincerely, Lee (Roy) Kim the smile man

Leroy, as I call him, is certainly a deep thinker. How DO you learn, smile man? The smile man's letter was perhaps only surpassed by another student's response to the SAT Essay question, "Is it important to be able to 'unlearn' what we have grown up thinking?" His thesis: "No, because unlearning can be dangerous. For example, if I unlearned that all black people have guns, i would be in much more dangerous situation. Because they do." Indeed.



So, down to my impressions of this cool/lame/traditional/modern/dirty/clean/strange country I am in. This post is not for the "attention span-impaired," as I have a lot to describe. You can't say I didn't warn ya...


Before I get to the culture critique, I'd like to start by saying that Korean students are not exactly the most vivacious kids I've ever laid eyes on. I liken them to downtrodden peasants in 14th century England, just hoping to survive one more day. Except they are solving math problems, not hoeing potatoes. The one energetic girl in my class brings me oranges every day and has asked her mother if she can marry me (the answer was yes, by the way). She also bought me three pairs of socks for Christmas. I don't know what to read into that. Anyways, the bad thing about this job is that my classes are taught to those students who sign up each day. So, I have new students every day, every class. It never affords me the opportunity to get to know them, and it makes it so that I never really know how many students I will have in class (ranges from 3-20). I don't even know what/when I'll be teaching on any given day because of this system. Getting to know groups of students would make this job much more enjoyable and allow me to really get my students interested and involved. Instead, I have to spend a lot of time repeating myself, and making sure everyone is caught-up with the material.

Now, for the social science textbook stuff. There are a few things that are very specific about Korean culture that I can describe: 1) the introversion and stress caused by education, 2) obsession with looking Western, and 3) the role of women. Takes notes, this will be on the final.

1) Because the culture is one in which, traditionally, the young take care of their elders later in life, the young are expected to work their butts off at school in order to get the best jobs. In this sort of atmosphere, naturally the competition to do well becomes fierce and after-school institutes like mine, called hakwons, come into existence to give students an edge over other students. But then all the other students, to keep up, need to go to hakwons too, and so on. I believe there was a Dr. Seuss book about this, where Sylvester McMonkey McBean offers the Sneetches without stars on their bellies a chance to have them by going through his Star-On machine, for three dollars. The old star-bellied Sneetches are furious until McBean tells them about his Star-Off machine, costing ten dollars. This continues until the Sneetches are penniless and McBean leaves a rich man. Old man McBean, in this case, is Mr. Park, and the hakwon is his English-On machine. He charges a fair bit more than $3, however. But just like in Dr. Seuss's book, these Sneetches will wise up soon and realize that they never needed that star on their belly in the first place. I'm pretty sure I have mangled this Dr. Seuss story that is usually used in analyzes of peace negotiations between waring countries, but I do like a good Sneetches reference.

The hakwon system is cut-throat, much more so than anything in America, and one which leaves little to no room to focus on an extracurricular like sports or music. Students obsess over their class rank because it is based on just four tests throughout the year. Furthermore, admission to Korean Universities is solely based on the results of one examination in the middle of senior year, sa-neung. Every single student I've ever talked with about the Korean education system dislikes it and wishes to go to an American school.

One of the reasons for disliking the Korean public school system is the way things are taught. It is ALL about memorization. A teacher lectures, the students take notes. There is NO discussion at all. Public schools do not really assign homework; they expect the kids to memorize and work things out on their own (at hakwons). There are no analytical essays or reports or projects to be graded; the majority of a student's education is expected to be done at hakwons.

I don't teach at a public school, obviously, but I hear this same description from all my students at hakwon. They spend most of their time sleeping at school (really) because they learn everything from their paid after-school hakwon sessions. Did you know there are over 100,000 English-speaking foreign teachers at hakwons in Korea? And here I thought I was special. Kids go to hakwons for English, History, SAT study, college application, Math, Physics, etc. On average, they attend from 5 to 9 hours of additional schooling at hakwons after regular school gets out. Some of my SAT students, after taking the test and reviewing it from 5:30-10:00 pm, have to go to a science hakwon until 1 am! Many students don't EVER have dinner at home and return from hakwons after midnight. And remember, this is a schedule that includes Saturday! The Korean education system looks inefficient as a result of this hakwon system that is detracting from the accountability of regular schools, yet is so widely accepted in this society. The newly elected Korean president, Lee Myung Bak (or, "horse face", as I know him), has vowed to change the education system, but I'm not yet sure how he plans to do it. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence to learn that his two children are attending American schools...

Interestingly, I asked my students if they supported the idea of hakwons and they all generally agreed that they were necessary for various reasons, especially because they think that they would not learn anything on their own if not for hakwons. Essentially, they feel they need someone constantly hovering over them, pounding material into their heads. They are not used to doing work on their own, like research projects.

When I ask my students, "Do you hate hakwons?" they say yes; however, when I ask them, "Would you send your kids to hakwons?" they also say yes. Almost all Korean public school students attend these after-school hakwons, just to give you an idea. Their parents ascribe such importance to the name value of colleges like Yale that they push their kids to the absolute limit to achieve their Ivy League goal. I think it's safe to assume that most Americans are under no illusion that because a person went to a big-name school that he/she will be successful. I think most of us more reasonably think that it is the motivation of the person that determines success. But Korean businesses put a lot of stock in a name like Yale on the diploma, and parents know this. How do you think I got this $50,000+, apartment provided, first-year, no experience, teaching job? I literally sent in a single e-mail asking to know more about this opportunity (from my Yale e-mail address), and received a call from the Korean recruiter within two hours, telling me I was just PERFECT for the job, but not telling me any actual info about the school or teaching. No, I had not sent a resume, or a cover letter, or anything at all. My school plasters the Harvard and Yale banners of its teachers anywhere it can, because that's what parents want to see.In fact , simply speaking native English is good enough for many hakwon teaching jobs here (less reputable than my school's jobs); I actually read on another Korean teacher's blog that his school's kindergarten teacher down the hall used to be a bounty-hunter in Mexico.

Hakwons, when it comes to college admission work, are somewhat corrupt. If a mother comes in, dragging her son behind her, and tells my boss that her son must get into New York University, and he needs help with his college applications, my boss finds me and says I need to "help" this student with his applications. Some of these kids cannot speak or write English! Thus, my boss does not so much want me to "help" as he wants me to rewrite the translated version of the essays and get this kid into the school (the funniest things about Korean students' essays is their love of metaphors; everything is a "tiger eager to pounce", or an "eagle spreading its wings"). I have not been so amenable to this, and have been simply making suggestions and comments, rather than changes to the sentences and ideas themselves. Sometimes, if the student is closely connected to the school in some way, my boss will call me into his office and say, "James, we need a final draft of this by tonight...understand?" I nod my head, go back to work, make a few changes to terrible ideas/sentences and e-mail the paper back. I have become pretty cynical about this, as you can see. I would hate to think that I'm unfairly helping kids get into schools that most definitely do not deserve to get in. The kids themselves don't even understand what's going on. It's their parents who drag them through this process kicking and screaming, making deals with hakwons to get their kid into good American schools.

Also concerning education: physical punishment by teachers shows that Koreans are serious about their education. I understand that public school students, if they are late to class, are slapped or told to go outside and run around the field ten times before coming inside. In my own classes, I try to keep an energetic atmosphere in the class, and, just when things are starting to go well and I've got the students talking, the headmaster comes in to every class to check homework, and, if a student doesn't do homework, he uses a ruler to whack their open palms (the lightest punishment), firmly smack them in the head a few times, and even head butt them (no kidding)! There is usually no need for more than the ruler, and it never becomes outrageously violent, don't get me wrong, but it is disconcerting to sit there in silence and watch him take their heads into his hands, and head butt them. I mean, really! This is nothing out of the ordinary for either him or the students though, and he always smiles at me and asks about my day before leaving. He is a very nice man and I like him a lot, but the students sit up straight and buckle their lips when he comes into the room. All teachers in public schools have their own personal canes/sticks in their desks or hanging on the wall, I am told. None of my students has ever responded "yes" when I asked if physical punishment is good for discipline in schools.

2) The obsession with the West, as I will term it, is interesting. Obviously American culture is everywhere in the world these days. You can't go anywhere without finding American movies and music being played. But what I mean is how so many Koreans want to not only dress like us, but to literally change their bodies to look more Western. I have heard that plastic surgery is a booming business in Seoul for young people because of the desire to have "bigger eyes". Every girl I have asked about this has said that the MAJORITY of girls in Korea have had plastic surgery on either their eyes (to make them wider), their noses (to make them less flat), or their jaws (to make them narrower). In my TOEFL classes, which I mentioned above about creative thinking, sometimes there is a question that asks about the qualities of a good person. Almost all the girls respond with something along the lines of "tall, blonde, big eyes". Clearly these girls are deep-thinkers. Well, Korean men are not tall, not blonde, and don't have big eyes. I know this is a very simplistic example to use, from teenage girls in my class, but the men of any culture want to impress the women, and if the women want Western looks, it kinda puts the men in a tight spot. Not that there is any surgery that makes you taller and not many Korean men dye their hair blonde, but I think there is some tension between Korean men and Western men because of the Korean womens' desire for Western looks. I guess I shouldn't be complaining, right?

3) Lastly, the ladies! This is a major economic power, South Korea, but it is still in the 1920's of American thinking about women. Women work in the home or help run the family restaurant or maybe have a clerical job, and that is it (foreign women teachers are obviously a different category). You have to be a pretty woman to get a job as a secretary in a nice office. Ugly women, unfortunately, you do not see employed anywhere but convenience stores and the like. Blunt, but true. This does not mean that girls are given less education than boys (nowadays, at least); I think the girls in my classes are actually brighter than the boys! I think by the time this young generation grows up, the role of the sexes will be on more even footing. It is so difficult to judge how fast Korean society is maturing because it has only been 60 years since they were freed from a truly horrific Japanese colonial occupation and began a democratic society where women could live in a modern society. Well, the democratic part didn't start until the late 1980's, but you get my meaning. The women's movement in America was going for a lot longer than that to expand the female sphere to where it is today. Also, you may have heard of Korean Karaoke Rooms. At these places, which are everywhere, you can actually pay for pretty women to come sing with you. In many of these singing rooms, you can wink-wink nudge-nudge with the manager to purchase "special services" from the women. They are essentially karaoke-brothel houses. I have been told that over one million Korean women work in these places, selling their "services", not because they are sinful depraved souls but because those are the highest paying jobs for women in Korea.

So, those are my observations of Korea. There lots of other little stuff, but you might fall asleep while reading if I listed it all.

Final thoughts. I wrote in my last blog that I don't really know what to think right now about the future. I vowed when I left the US that I would not get to the end of my year in Korea and realize that I have nothing planned for the (immediate) future. I know I still have a long time, but it worries me a little that I still don't even have a clue. I don't especially want to apply for a finance job via online apps and all that jazz, but on the other hand maybe I should. Or, I've always envisioned myself running a business, but I've never thought of what I would do. I've even pondered writing something, seeing as I spend a lot of time doing that anyway. This business of teaching how to write essays, speaking well, and reviewing the SAT is just a job, nothing I can get excited about. I consider myself good at my job and try my best to teach well, but I know I need to do some serious thinking about what I'll be doing 10 months hence.

For that matter, I don't even know where I want to be. There's always New England, around friends. But then there's the rest of the world, too! Not that I'm crazy about gallivanting off to the far corners of the map. It's just a possibility. But possibilities are nice. Friends would be nice to be around, but I need something to want in life, first. I know that sounds forlorn, but don't worry, I'm just anxious for something to look forward to. Whether it's a job I like, or something else.

I'll keep you up to date if any of these opinions of mine change. And now, I'm gonna make like a tree and get outta here.

(if you didn't get that reference, shame on you)