By Taru Taylor
What makes a good teacher? Discipline. This answer is simplistic to those who see the good teacher as a pedagogue in command of behavioral psychology. But that's because simplicity confuses the sophist.
To elaborate nevertheless, the good teacher is a disciplinarian who commands a method of inquiry. He helps others to apprehend his discipline ― as a frame of reference ― to see and approach problems. He helps them to comprehend it ― as an analytical tool ― to solve problems.
Show me a master of his discipline and I'll show you a good teacher. Show me a disciplinarian and I'll show you an educator.
Common sense knows that to teach something, anything, one has to know, very well, that thing. That one has to know the pretext, the subtext, and the context of the text, to really know the text, and thus really teach the text.
Common sense knows that a good teacher has the patience to talk about his discipline, at length, to people who don't really know much about it. He can explain it and field questions.
Common sense knows that an educator's passion for his discipline translates into his enthusiasm for others' interest. Common sense sees the kinship between education and coaching.
A good basketball coach, for example, drills his players in mechanics and fundamentals for them to succeed. His strategy for winning is based on his deep understanding of the game. The educator professes his chosen discipline as a technique that people can use for inquiry and for solving problems.
That basketball coach, of course, had better know basketball. What about the English teacher? Must he know English, be a master thereof? Common sense knows this to be a stupid question.
Not behaviorist pedagogy. Its schools of education in the United States and elsewhere defy common sense. According to its conventional wisdom, a teacher need not master any specific discipline.
Pedagogic method is its end-all and be-all: how to teach this or that, whatever to whomever. Never mind the content. It's not about discipline. It defies the whole concept of discipline, which is derived from the Latin word ``disciplinare," meaning ``to teach."
Discipline is about teaching something. Pedagogy is about teaching as a method for controlling behavior, so-called ``classroom management." Thus, like the bird that chews and breaks down food for its young, behaviorist pedagogy dilutes, and dumbs down, discipline.
Take mathematics, for example, the cumulative discipline of arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and calculus. America has allowed its schools of education to develop a dumbed-down mathematic called ``integrated math."
No doubt this is for the benefit of pedagogues who, while not mathematicians, collect paychecks as so-called ``math teachers."
Here in Korea ``conversational" and ``business" English are euphemisms for dumbed-down English. Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) and teaching English as a second language (TESL) have magically made English ``fun and easy." Or have they?
Yeah, just keep them entertained. No need to know the text. Just stay a chapter ahead in the textbook. The American educational theorist, John Dewey, is mostly responsible for this paradigm-shift ― from the old school of discipline and independent thought, to this newfangled school of proper behavior and social conformity.
``Socialization" he called it. But Dewey's pedagogy reduces students, who should be disciples of reading, writing and arithmetic, and of the liberal arts and sciences beyond, to the level of Pavlov's dogs. But instead of steak, they salivate for grades and the prestige they betoken.
Here in Korea, the so-called ``English teacher'' need not have mastered English. He doesn't have to know grammatical structure, nor logical infrastructure, nor rhetorical superstructure. Here in Korea, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, the verbal liberal arts, are irrelevant.
Here the ``English teacher" has only to teach from childish textbooks with more pictures than text; picture books, really. He's OK so long as he embodies Western prestige and the glamour of the Caucasian race.
His students, for the most part, aren't interested in learning English as a technique for approaching and solving the problems of civilization. They are much more interested in him as a ``native speaker'' whose Anglo-American accent they would imitate.
He is not their teacher so much as their idol. They're not interested in English as a tool of scientific method. For them, it is a charm of imitative magic.
``Imitative magic'' is a non sequitur: ``like produces like,'' or, ``an effect resembles its cause.'' The Korean seems to think that imitating a Western accent, especially American, produces fluent English. But sticking pins in a doll hurts no one.
Mimicking an accent never helped anybody either. Regional accents, after all, are accidental effects. Such mimicry is ``Voodoo English."
The Korean must learn the essential causes that produce English fluency. Mastery of phonetics first of all, which means decoding the 44 sounds produced by the 26 letters of the English alphabet; the overwhelming majority of these sounds follow the rules.
Then parts of speech and definitions; paragraphs and syllogisms; the five-paragraph essay and logical argument ― fluency is about syntactical command. It is about knowing how to think in English.
It is about knowing how to communicate theories and ideas to the world-interlocutor-at-large. Fluency is about discourse, not conversation. It is about English, not dumbed-down versions such as English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL).
So long as Korea continues along its newfound path of worldly success, with command of English as a reflection thereof, who knows? Perhaps others will imitate its accent.
The writer teaches English at Semyung University in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province. He can be reached at tarutaylor@gmail.com.