By David Thiessen
All of us long-timers have all seen them. These people are fresh off the boat and come armed with their newly obtained bachelor’s or master’s of education degrees or their newly minted teacher’s diploma and think that they are brought here to revolutionize the Korean education system (KES).
Some even think that since they were given a contract they are invited to judge the validity of the KES and determine what is wrong with it. They are not in any case. These people fail to realize that their contracts limit their participation to their job title _ teach English. They are not hired to usurp the authority of their employers nor the legitimately elected government officials.
They forget that the American system, and for that matter many of the Western systems, has failed its students as the only thing they have succeeded at in the past 30 years is to dumb down their people. They also ignore the fact that the Western system is rife with problems and if they truly had the correct way to teach, then they would not be in this country or overseas, they would be getting rich marketing their miracle formula to the desperate Western schools who truly want their students to be properly educated.
These people who think they are God’s gift to Korean education also ignore the fact that they are not the first people to think of their ideas which have been rejected for valid reasons long before they landed upon these shores. They bring nothing original with them and since they do not grasp nor understand the Korean culture and do not know their boundaries, they encounter more problems than they should. They need to understand that the Korean people have been successfully educating their children for longer than these God’s gifts’ ancestors have lived.
They do not need Westerners who have the audacity to judge and condemn their ways. Talk about insulting one’s host’s intelligence and ability and no wonder they are unsuccessful. These self-appointed gurus of education just do not get it nor see the whole picture and wonder why they are rebuffed and unemployed.
Which brings me to another problem these people champion, and others jump on their bandwagon in support of their call for elitism. They proclaim that only those with bachelor’s (etc.) of education or teacher’s diploma are qualified to teach and be in the classroom. They sweep aside the fact that such qualifications open the doors to the very people they wish to keep out: the unqualified and those with perverted sexual tendencies, among other undesirable traits.
It isn’t just America with this problem as these undesirable people keep their criminal record clean and prey upon vulnerable students without worry because they raise no red flags and are accepted by their colleagues simply because they have the correct pieces of paper. All these diplomas indicate is that the holder successfully completed the required amount of work to obtain them. They are not guarantees that the holder can teach and I have seen more of these ‘qualified’ people fail because they can’t teach and cannot adapt to a different cultural practice.
The KES would be better off, as would all the rest of the native English teachers, if these revolutionaries learned to mind their own business and let the Korean people handle their own affairs. If they are so sure that their way is better, then let them spend their own money, take all the risks, pay all the salaries, recruit students and appease the parents and show by example that their way is better. The problem is, these people won’t do that as it is easier to point the finger at someone else and claim they are wrong than it is to go out and put their ways into practice first.
The major problem with the KES is that they listen to Americans and other Westerners instead of having confidence in their own training, their own intelligence and themselves. Korean does not need to follow the West, for it is not superior to the Korean way. If they do not follow God and His ways, then all systems are the same and fail their students.
The writer is an English teacher in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at jigufli@fastmail.fm.