Is English Teaching Here Gold Rush?

By Jon Huer
Korea Times Columnist

Football teams send their assistant coaches to a high place to observe the whole field and get a better perspective of what's going on down below. Not having been an English teacher in Korea gives me the advantage of being an observer of the whole field, and the perspective you gain from this high-ground position is quite rewarding.

From that vantage point, this is what I see in the business of English teaching in Korea: It is the wild frontier of a gold-rush shanty town where anything goes, where great successes and miserable failures coexist, and where all sorts of unsavory actions take place among the players.

Indeed, the resemblance of English teaching in Korea to a gold rush in the American western frontier is quite striking and the comparison yields fresh and rich insights into this very peculiar modern phenomenon. Let us follow the steps to accomplish our task:

First, there is a rumor, generally wild, grapevine-style, of gold being discovered in a faraway place. Word spreads quickly, as such things tend to do, among the eagerly awaiting.

The information about English teaching in a hitherto Third World but now affluent country spreads the same way among those who find the news enticing for various reasons, mostly related to financial fantasies and dreams of foreign adventures. Both gold discovery and teaching English in Korea have these fantasy-like and dreamy qualities about them as tales of success spread faster than facts of misery or failure. For the eager crowd, Korea emerges as the new El Dorado that stirs their imaginative adrenaline.

Second, those who respond to the rumors of great fortunes in gold or of a sweet and easy livelihood in English teaching in Korea quickly recognize that very little investment is necessary.

The gold prospector only needs a pick, a pan and a mule, the English-teaching speculator a decent English-speaking ability and, if possible, a Caucasian ancestry. For the latter, word is that teaching English in Korea requires a college degree at a minimum.

But this requirement can be worked around because of Korea's basic ignorance about the college system in America, Canada and other English-speaking countries.

Also, given the number and the exotic nature of colleges in the United States, it is well-nigh impossible to know what kind of college "University of Pacifica" really is.

Thus, both the gold speculator and the would-be English teacher can travel light for their respective adventures and rewards.

Third, as there is a serious difference between a businessman and a gold speculator, there is also a serious difference between a regular schoolteacher and an English teacher in Korea. For the former, there is a sense of lifetime commitment in their callings; both the businessman and the schoolteacher consider their choices essentially a life-deciding destiny that requires a long period of preparation and apprenticeship.

Especially for the schoolteacher, a long and formally established process of qualifying is necessary. For the English teacher in Korea, by contrast, and quite like the gold speculator, the decision tends to be spur-of-the-moment as rumors of English El Dorado reach them by accident.

Hardly a long and weighty preparation is given to the decision, and no real formal qualification (a B.A. and ESL training not withstanding) or pedagogic talent is necessary.

Besides, what makes this venture easier is the fact that English teaching flows generally from an advanced country to a hitherto Third World nation which is eager to learn English at any cost and this fact takes care of possible troublesome details. Basically the English teacher, armed with English and nothing else, appears at the doorstep of a Korean school and the job is his.

Fourth, the response to gold prospecting and English teaching in a foreign country, by the very nature of its economic-financial adventure, is necessarily a form of gambling. As such, the venture appeals to a certain type of humanity.

Gentle and decent souls who wish to live out an eventless, honest, and predictable life need not apply and, indeed, they would stay away from such wild, speculative, untried career moves. Naturally, the enterprise appeals to adventurers, fortune hunters, speculators, and even unsavory characters who search for easy, quick fortunes somewhere, enduring temporary discomfort in an alien culture.

English teaching in Korea is a great show on earth, like the sirens in Homer's epic, that is hard to resist for its relative ease and rumored reward. For all that it promises, one only needs a basic English-speaking ability in his arsenal to join the adventure camp.

Fifth, thus inspired and armed, both the gold speculators and English teachers in Korea converge in a wild frontier town which is hastily set up to accommodate these fortune seekers.

There are virtually no rules, and no predictable life in either category. They rush from one place to another and try out one possibility after another. Amid the few success stories, a great many of them experience nothing but misery and failure, but the enticement is like drugs to a drug user and jackpots to a gambler.

They hear great ``hit" stories of finding gold, and of connecting to good hagwon, honest employers, interesting native friends, and loads of fun in Korea.

But many of them also experience failure and misery: No gold for the gold speculator and much hardship and exploitation through unsavory employers for the English teacher in Korea. As in all gambling, losers vastly outnumber winners when they hastily throw themselves into speculative ventures.

Sixth, the most salient point in both adventures is that there is no real quality control in either enterprise. The gold rusher is basically a one-man operation, digging and speculating in his solitary existence.

For the English teacher in Korea, it is also a solitary enterprise, basically using his own wits, ingenuity and inspiration, and nothing else. Teaching English as a second language is nothing like teaching English composition or literature at English-speaking schools where things are organized and rules established by scholarship and tradition.

English teaching in Korea is wholly haphazard and helter-skelter; the English-alien Koreans have no idea what good-English teaching is or poor English teaching looks like since the English language itself is an esoteric subject to them.

In many cases, they only know what they like or dislike about the teacher or his teaching. So personality matters a great deal, and naturally someone with happy and creative personality traits tends to do much better in this one-man enterprise in no-man's land called English teaching in Korea.

The role of personal wisdom and maturity, along with a healthy respect for one's students, is paramount for success in a society that knows little English but values personal discipline and moral principle. So is the element of luck. Just like the gold prospector, luck is a cardinal virtue for the English teacher in Korea, in connecting with a good pupil, class, or employer, or enjoying Korea's better national or cultural traits in enduring friendship and networking.

Life is thus made breathlessly unpredictable and precarious, both in gold prospecting and English teaching in Korea, which is what goads a stream of newcomers to such adventures, and the process is repeated.

Finally, the frontier shanty town comes to its natural end when gold is no more and the speculators pick up their tools and leave town in sorrowful loneliness and with no gold. So it is for the many English teachers who leave Korea in great bitterness for personal failure and cultural dislike for things Korean while the lucky few who find happiness and fulfillment in Korea stay in relative personal satisfaction and career success.

Do the failures and successes of English teaching in Korea cancel each other out? Do the happy English teachers in Korea erase the bitterness and rancor of those who fail and depart in anguish and hatefulness? The answer hinges on to whom you talk.

Well, my parting word to the wise: You were in an untried adventure, with possibilities of great success and probabilities of great failure, and the odds were simply against you because it was a gamble. As in all gambling bets, odds naturally disfavor you. Because you got into the gamble with little of your own investment, the venture discarded you with little thought of sympathy.

To those who have succeeded, enjoy life in Korea, a place like no other on this God's green Earth!

The writer can be reached at jonhuer@hotmail.com.The opinions expressed and the observations described in these articles are strictly the writer's own and do not represent any official position of the University of Maryland University College or the USFK.