Helping young people build good lives

By Lyman McLallen

A train heads out of the city in the late afternoon crowded with commuters going home after work. All the seats are full and many of the passengers are standing. They listen to music, watch TV or play video games on their smartphones. Some read newspapers, magazines or books. Mostly, they are quiet, deep in their own thoughts on the crowded train.

At City Hall a swarm of boys in school uniforms ― not yet teenagers but no longer small children ― bursts into one of the cars of the train. The boys buzz around the car in clusters of four or five, yet they aren't bothering any of the other passengers and aren't rude to anybody, though everybody notices them. They look to be on their way back to school from a field trip and are enjoying a rare instance away from the tedium of class work.

A young man about 10 years older than the boys gets on the train with them. He doesn't seem to mind if they congregate in the aisle of the car, playing with their smartphones and gathering in small groups, as long as they don't intrude on the other passengers. Occasionally, the young man has to remind the boys to make room for an older person but he does this gently.

Clearly, the boys respect and like the young man. Spending their school days with him for the whole year, they have all come to know each other well. He also knows their parents, for teachers and students form close bonds which necessarily include mothers and fathers.

Each in their way, parents and teachers inspire the boys to cultivate good habits and expand their perspectives as they rush through their school days. It only makes sense, after all, that the significant adults in the lives of the young should work together, helping them while they're still in school to become responsible citizens.

Science, mathematics, history, standardized test-taking and the other subjects of the curriculum aren't the only learning the young man is helping the boys with. How he conducts himself, how he treats them will stick with them all through their lives. Before long, the boys will forget the details about the subjects he's teaching them, but they won't forget the young man.

People who teach children and teenagers, as the young man does, are engaged in vitally important work, maybe the most important work of society, for every day in their schools and classrooms teachers help young people shape their lives. Every day they inspire and help their students strive to reach as far as they can, encouraging them to imagine worthy visions of what they can do with their lives, then help them work toward those visions.

Soon, the boys will become grown-ups and their school days with the young man and their other teachers will be over and they will find themselves making their own way in the world. The world for them will be much more complex than it is for anybody now and they and their generation must be up to the task of understanding and working with the nuances of that world.

Because of the unceasing advances in science and technology, civilization will continue to evolve in their lifetimes even more rapidly than it is now. By the time the children of today reach adulthood, the world will have changed so much it would be unrecognizable and confusing to even the most astute people living and working in this day.

The boys riding on the train on their way back to school will have to master knowledge and skills nobody alive now could even imagine. They will have to learn and relearn about the ever-changing world, which not even they and not the young man who is their teacher know anything about.

This afternoon, though, they're just having fun under the tutelage of the young man, for he is their teacher.

Lyman McLallen has lived in Korea for the last 20 years during which time he has taught at Korea University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. For the last three years he has worked as a copy editor at The Korea Times.