Test Week

I’m not certain how it happened, but soon after being moved to the Academy I became the writing teacher for the middle school students. I still teach speaking at the elementary level, but I think its evident to all that I’m better with the older kids, I just can’t seem to hide my marshmallow interior from the young ones, and they use their cuteness like the devastating weapon it is; I’ve got the older kids suitably cowered though.

This months test have run the usual gamut from on-going assessment, to listening & comprehension tests, to simple written tests, but the hardest ones are always the elementary writing classes. How do you get kids who have spent their education rote learning to form an opinion, or even a basic argument? This is the uphill battle that makes teaching a little frustrating.

This is the country with no sex industry (have you ever been out after dark here?) and no homosexuals (despite the surveys that show about 4% of teenage boys have had sexual experience with other males), and is still in denial about AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and juicy girls. Combine this with the fact that two of my older classes can barely string a sentence together and it makes marking writing a tad difficult.

I’d love to get them to write on a woman’s role in modern Korea, or the issues of date rape, or wonjo kyojae. Unfortunately works like this would require analytical  thinking (I’ve come to realise that I give my kids credit for more cognitive ability then they have), an opinion and the ability to research rather then regurgitate. None of these are skills encouraged in the Korean education system. The easy path is to just get them to write on something like the soon-to-be-released Starcraft 2. But even then the work is hardly impressive.  

Maybe I expect too much, to be fair most westerners aren’t taught to think for themselves till senior high school, and challenging the status quo isn’t suggested till university. Maybe I should go back to getting them to write about their families and their favourite animals. GODS I’M BECOMING A TEACHER

Reflections

Ever since I took my first steps out of my safe little country I have found that other nations are as focused on America as my own is. Not at all surprising since I’ve been in America’s biggest rival and two of its most loyal (see dependant) allies. Yet here and at home it is driven home on an almost daily basis as to how unpopular America, and by default Americans, have become.

Don’t believe me? Have a look at this link.

There are four basic ways to assess America from outside, these are American News Media, America Pop Culture, Americans abroad, and local media reports on America. Lets start with American Pop culture.

Britney Spears, Action Movies, and Gangsta Rap. These are the cultural ambassadors that precede America into the world, and between the three of them they are sure to trample on the sensibilities of the local populaces.

 Showing a sexually suggestive, scantily clad Britney gyrating in “strange and confusing ways” to a young Islamic teenager is going to do one of two things. In those seeking to rebel against their existing lives it will enforce the exiting stereotype that white women are all whores who want to be treated like pieces of meat; for those terrified of change it will simply drive home the message of the conservatives that these things come from a “sinful place” and that such places have nothing to offer them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m partial to the scantily clad female form, and the odd gyration isn’t going to send me on a suicide bombing run. Yet for those from a less liberal (or hedonistic as the pope apparently called it) nation need to be led gently towards opening their hearts and minds, simply trampling over what people hold dear only makes it more important to them. Imagine early American puritans faced with an Aguilera music clip, they would have been reaching for the torches and pitchforks too. How can we blame equally conservative modern cultures for reacting the same way? They need to see that modestly clad women with exposed faces and arms are human too, and that the presence of skin shouldn’t send a man into an animalistic state of lust unless he is already an animal.  

Hip-hop music is the music of the current angry generation, its done to the youth of today what Heavy Metal did to the youth of my day (only with more guns). The rap that finds its way overseas has a few constantly reoccuring themes. Violence, vengence, disrespect or rebellion agianst authority, drug use, and general helplessness tend to permeate the music and those images have to stick, even if the words are in a foreign language.

Sad fact is, as we get older we get more conservative. The youth of Asia that embrace the bad-boy rapper image today are going to be the businessmen of tomorrow, and what they took as fun rebellion as youths is going to become a challenge to their stable conservative lives as they age. Sadly the pressure of conformity, respect for your elders (even those a year or two older) is so strong here that even the though of rebellion is alien in Korea. The only thing that is likely to leave any major impression is the helplessness, and considering this nations youth suicide rate, another reason to be depressed is something these kids don’t need. 

 

So who has walked out of an action movie and said to themselves… “I feel better about the world I live in”. Well most of the world gets their view of America from Hollywood, complete with the images of uber criminals, corrupt cops, vigilantes, gun fights, persecution and stereotyping of various racial groups, and a whole plethora of violent and depraved activities. Hollywood is America’s biggest PR department, and they really aren’t doing the nation any favours. So many of my older kids want to learn English for business, but the idea of travelling to America is one that scares them; and considering the death by firearms and violent crime statistics, I can’t blame them.

I could go on for hours on the Main Stream Media and its coverage of local and world events, but this post is already way too long so I’ll save it for another day. Time to do some real work.

To Ski or not to Ski, that is the question

My apologies to Sir William Shakespear.

I’ve just come back from a surprisingly refreshing weekend away in the hinterlands of Korea, (only about an hour from home, but here that is a fair distance). The weekend comprised of me getting wet on the way home from work, lugging alcoholic supplies, and then lugging them and our bags back to work for 10:30pm departure. [I hate getting wet socks] The trip was a combined one with some of the staff from the Hopyung school, and just myself and my better third from Guri. It was a Ski trip during which half of us wouldn’t Ski, in fact of those that got on the slopes the only one on skies was an elementary student.

On the drive there I got another cultural twitch, where something that is taken as common here clashes with my own cultural assumptions, when the driver confused the accelerator and brake for a moment. No biggie, it happens, but the thing that pinged on my strange concepts radar was when he said “maybe I was tempted by a ghost”. It’s the staple of Korean movies, that ghosts seek to get others to join them in death, I just forget how much that is a reflection of the culture and not just a cinematic tool.

The drinking commenced on the Friday night just after arrival at around 12:30, and went until we were drunk enough to brave sleeping on the floor. The three kids got the bunk beds, and the girls got the room with the other beds. The next day, after maybe an hours sleep, the pair of us were wrecked, and the 4 kilometre drive to the slopes began. I have to say it was not what I expected. My last recollections of skiing were of sparsely populated slopes, with trails winding between conifers, and a wooden lodge at either end complete with hard alcohol and a fireplace. This place was the polar opposite, at the base of the slopes were a series of hotels (that in summer service the attached water-world) and a huge Mall. The slopes were strait, packed with artificial snow and were distinct white paths descending an otherwise brown mountain. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty cool (frigid in fact), just a long way from what I had pictured in my head. 

The picture above is of one of the teachers, proving once more that Korean women have a biological imperative to pose whenever a camera is present. Sweet, gorgeous and very smart, granted these are my virtues, but I’m willing to admit that she shares them too :p

A few more pictures to follow, the nocturnal cross burnings, the drunken philosophising, proof that the kids are hardier then us adults, and all the rest.    

George W Bush, King of America

I was having a nice Japanese breakfast the other day in the local eatery opposite the academy where I work and talk got around to politics, and that is when it hit me… America no longer has a president. With all the new powers available to the administration to avoid legal entanglements, to spy on its own people, and the ability to veto laws without contest, America has got itself a Monarchy.

Granted most Monarchies are hereditary, and this one has a 8 year shelf-life, but many divinely ordained monarchs ruled for shorter spans then that. I wonder what the founding fathers must think about what has become of the country they liberated from the English King (a task that would have been impossible without the aid of the French), and fought for with the Spanish? I wonder if they would approve.

Fear not America, history has shown us that Monarchs, especially when backed by evangelistic fervor are always good for the country, even when they are so incapable of independent thought that they appear mildly retarded. Oh wait…… no it hasn’t. Maybe that is why the most powerful nation in the world has such a huge debt, and is looking to be dwarfed by China in the not-to-distant future.

At least in China the students that do get as far as High school learn that the earth revolves around the sun, that evolution is a fact (even if the mechanism is still subject to debate), and can identify other countries on the map.

 Hail to the Chief? Or long live the King?  

Korea? Is that where TV’s are made?

There seem to be only two reasons why we in the west even recall that South Korea exists. It is hard to shake the image of an aging megalomaniac with nuclear weapons at his disposal (but Bush will be gone soon) so Kim Jong-il is the last remaining specter in that category. So a constant reminder of the North also gives us a reminder of the south, and the American Military forces still stationed along the DMZ. It is also hard to forget Korea when it feels like the main Korean export is its people. We constantly wander into little ‘Korea Towns’ where the locals band together in an attempt to remain Korean, and often maintain the traditional lifestyles that have almost vanished back in their homeland.

Actually there is a third thing; the level of progression here in the bio-sciences is startling. I’ve heard it argued that this is due to lesser ethical practice restraints then skilled biogenetics, but that could just be jealousy at a system that works. As it is South Korean scientist seem to be leading the way in research into stem-cell usage and cloning. I think that is remarkable, but if the stories are to be believed then most of America (who define themselves as “the world”) are too happy being ignorant to notice something could completely change the world we live in.

Then, of course, there are the Korean women, about whom so many blogs have been written. There is no point re-hashing all that, its just hormones under the bridge

Statistics & Damn Lies

I come from a little country ‘down-under’ that is lucky to have 20 million people, yet here I am on the outskirts of a city that has 3/4 of that. That is a lot of people for a small-country guy like me.

In the last six months you’d think that I would have mastered at least the basics of this language, but no. So now begins operation Make Sense of Chicken Scratchings during which I have to dedicate 30 minutes each day to learning the Korean alphabet and reading. I’ll need to get more organized of course, maybe some of those index cards that the ‘other third’ is so fond of, a decent Korean-English dictionary and some children’s books. For now just nailing the sounds, basic vocabulary and numbering systems should be enough.

I’ve been here 6 months now, and with minimal language skills I’ve decided to do a few things to make the most of my time here.

• Integrate all my damn blogs, webpages, and other ‘net presences’ into this wordpress site.
•  Invest in a small, easily portable camera so this site has some visuals as well as me babbling on.
• Add a ‘funky’ words list to this page.

To start off here is a ‘taste’ of why I love the Korean mindset so much http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXfakp2gajs

Hello Asia!

It’s funny, but we all know so much about a select few of our Asian neighbors (a self-delusional term in its own right as we are pretty much part of Asia ourselves) . There are the big two China (voted most likely to knock the USA off its pedestal in the next few decades), and Japan (famous for cut-throat businessmen, comical ninja’s, and buying most of coastal Queensland).

Even Vietnam and Indonesia register, the first as the last place that the American military got their pizza guzzling posteriors handed to them in a ‘non-war’, and the later as voted “most likely to invade Northern Australia as their cities slip underwater due to Global Warming”. So what about poor little South Korea?

 

For the most part South Korea doesn’t get much of a mention, and it certainly isn’t sitting in the front of our thoughts when someone talks about Asia. To be fair, despite a rich history and a massive population, I can see why. Historically Korea’s international role appears to have been “that place everyone seems to invade”. In fact the anti-Japanese sentiment is still strong in some students, a legacy of the last occupation.

 

In the modern age Korea seems to be the vanilla flavor of countries, its still there and still strong, but doesn’t get much of a look in. Its industrial base is slipping with manufacturing often moving to India and China where wages are so much lower, and there is practically no environmental protection. It barely registers in the minds of travelers as a tourist destination, and even the Korean language is under assault from a push to promote English as the language of commerce and international communication; and considering the unique history of Hungul its loss would be a sad thing indeed.