Education Whore

I'm gonna blather on a little bit more about my job here in Korea because I'm still feeling dirty from what I had to do yesterday. Let me splain. No it would take too long. Let me sum up. I taught about 200 students for the past 16 weeks. I'll use two students as examples of why you won't find my school on any lists of top educational facilities in Korea. In my class all you have to do is finish your assignments, write your tests, answer questions, come to class and try to stay awake. With the extremely lowered expectations I employ coupled with an uncanny knack Korean students have for cheating, that'll get you about 80%. Compare that to the student who occasionally strolls into class an hour and a half late and proceeds to distract other waking students by chatting in Korean, listens to his mp3 player, reads the Korean news, does Korean homework, talks on his phone, plays games on it and sends textmessages etc. Generally when you make a concerted effort NOT to learn like this you will end up with about 20% in my class just because you showed up when it suited your fancy.
I've been told to give no lower than 70% in my classes. So I have to give the 20% slacker 50 free percent. To try to offset that I give the 80 student an extra 20. SO, the bad student gets a gift of 250% and the good student gets a gift of 25%. Also, on the official attendance, no student has more than 11 hours absent. This too benefits the slackers.
What kind of message is this sending? I'll tell you, "Don't try. It's not worth it."
Yesterday I sent this message to 200 students. I feel like I should be sent to jail for two hundred counts of contributing to the stupidity of a minor.
To add insult to injury, after compiling the lists of phony marks, and phony attendance, my supervisor then required me to sign these lists like this anti-education was MY idea.
How did I choose to maintain some semblance of pride in my work? How did I choose to cleanse myself of this dirty academic whoredom? I refused to sign the lists and today I'm going to Seoul to pick up a ticket to Thailand I purchased. Hopefully two weeks of visiting the tiger sanctuary, snorkelling, riding elephants and such will dull the guilt I feel. If nothing else it'll provide some cool pics for this site, and no doubt some of the usual misadventures I have when I travel. Then when I get back I'll spend two or three weeks of my holiday doing some extremely intense REAL teaching at a kids camp somewhere in Korea. This is the pennance I have sentenced myself to. Hopefully all this will prepare me to reprise my role as an academic whore in September.
Wish me luck.