Foreigners Acting Like Koreans

What you are looking at is the best pic I could take of the stupid "common final" exam we had to give to our kids. It was Dec. 10th. I had about 135 kids jammed into one room like a rush hour subway and at the exact same time every other teacher was doing the same. In their wisdom the management of HUFS even decided to combine three of the teachers' classes into one big auditorium so they probably had about 3 or 4 hundred in there. I would show you the movie I took with my cam and give you a better idea of what we were working with but I always have trouble trying to put movies on here. I'll just say that HUFS is supposed to be one of the top schools in Korea for ESL or EFL and this testing style brought me back a coupla centuries.

Just one of the reasons their "education" system here is lagging so far behind the rest of the world. The irony is that Koreans are literally fanatical about education. They want so badly to be educated but they can't get beyond the obvious idea that they have to abandon their antiquated methods and start using ones that have been tried, tested and found far more effective.

It's kind of a catch 22. They get people who are trained with these old methods in positions where changes can be made to these old methods, but a huge part of the subject matter doled out to students through the old methods is how great and wonderful everything about Korea is, including its educational techniques. So they end up with a choice between what is right and what is Korean and this, unbelievably enough, is not much of a choice. We'll do it the Korean way!

Because this country is so fanatical about education to be an "educator" here is a HUGE badge of prestige. For this reason there are all kinds of people, many absolutely NOT educators, scrambling for the positions in which they can be seen as "educators" and I dunno, get laid at social functions or have people fake bow a little lower to them. People who are educators and who may have heard something about proper teaching techniques never seem to end up in the positions to implement them in Korea because the prestige hounds want it just a little more. And, again the genius of Joseph Heller, the catch 22 is that because the Korean "education" system is so messed up people can do things like bribe their ways to false doctorate degrees, commission smart people to write some smart educational literature and put their names on the books even though they understand none of the content. In this way you can make yourself appear to be an educator when you actually are just a guy with lots of spare change using it to buy some phony respect.

There are only a few things that can score you even more prestige in Korea than being viewed as an educator. You can always badmouth the U.S. or Japan. Never fails. Around election time people seem a bit less friendly to me because they support the platform of their preferred candidate, which, as the election draws nearer and he falls further behind the front runner, is becoming less about the real issues and more about "Yankees go home." But another sure way to get Koreans on your side is to be blindly patriotic. Using antiquated educational methodology because it is KOREAN trumps any reasoning supporting alternative methods that are better. Why? Because of the way they are "educated" here.

Another example of Korean methodology being employed at HUFS is the "no calling in sick" rule. It's against the law in Korea to fire someone if they miss days because they are sick. But they can sure make things difficult for you at work. Giving you bad schedules, bad performance reports etc. And if you're under contract, they can certainly choose not to re-sign you. We've recently had a rendition of this rule drawn up and circulated amongst the foreign staff at HUFS. It took this school several months to draw up new contracts with an amended pay scale for the employees here. In fact they couldn't even have them ready before the workers were hired. All us teachers are actually working under the old contracts. Now they are trying to decide which teachers to re-sign and which to get rid of and it's taking them forever. The Yong In campus of HUFS told their teachers who will be re-signed a couple months ago.

It's interesting how things happen at HUFS. I was deathly ill. I had something worse than the normal flu. I had spent two days coughing, blowing my nose, and not sleeping. I felt like I had been used as Mike Tyson's heavy bag. So I call in sick. It was a Thursday. One of the workers at HUFS, J.P., knows that I play pool Wednesday nights and stay out late drinking with the team. I usually just stay up all night and teach my classes THEN go home to sleep. But I NEVER missed a class because of it. The day I was sick Dean asks J.P. where I was. J.P. tells Dean about pool nights and how he figures I was just hungover. I don't blame J.P. for thinking that. I knew that would be a suspicion. Only hours after Dean, (who has been lobbying shamelessly to get on the good side of our supervisor and get appointed to the position of head teacher), heard that I might not actually be sick, I received a text message from the supervisor saying that I had to teach make-up classes for time missed and then we all received the notice of the new sickness policy. Basically we can still get sick as long as we teach while we suffer. Interesting...

And while we're kind of on the subject of Dean Dawson, I managed to find out just exactly what the hell was going on with the lame-ass teachers here. Why nobody would support any action that seemed in disaccord with Dean's wishes. He's responsible for hiring many of the teachers here. Enough of them so that he sort of has a majority government at HUFS. They are under the impression that he hired them and he can fire them. So they don't want to oppose him in any way. They're all just his rugby buddies. I doubt any of them has been in Korea or teaching for as long as they claim. It was curious to me how we never talked about that or about their rugby playing.

So now we're all suffering through the marking of this test he forced on us. It is taking forever to mark. It's rife with weak questions that the students are not getting wrong because they don't know the answer but because they can't understand what the question is asking them. These are questions he left in after being advised by better teachers, (including me), to remove them. I have had to adjust my marking because of them. I'm just adding one mark to every student's test because of the one question that I gave several reasons why it should be removed. It was edited and made worse, but not removed. So they all just get it right. It's the only fair thing to do. And they all know the answer anyway, which was one of the reasons why I thought it was unnecessary in the first place. What is expected is for the students to complete a quote taken directly from the text explaining a language point. Their knowledge of the text, NOT the language point, is what is being tested. And if you show this test to 100 people I doubt even one of them would guess it's an ESL or EFL test. It's just a test of the content of the book.

It's odd but when you look at the situations of Dean being in the position he's in and the management of the schools here in Korea it's practically the same thing. He doesn't deserve to be head teacher. He certainly fucked up everything he's done from his self-appointed position of leadership to this point. But he seems to want it more than anyone and he's lying, cheating and stealing his way there. I'm sure he's already bought the brass desk plaque and addressed his Christmas cards as Dean Dawson Head Teacher. Maybe he'll be president of HUFS some day.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll look at that picture in the future and remember how great the students were at HUFS. They were the best part about this job. I've never had better students. I never have a problem with the students anywhere I work. They usually ARE the best part of the job. But HUFS students were just a bit better. And I'll miss them. I certainly won't miss anything else about HUFS though. The management is on a course that is in my opinion the opposite of the direction they should be headed. They are making things more Korean, (bass ackwards), every day. I don't want to see that continue next year. And as for the teachers, they can bend over and take it up the bass ackwards from the management and Dean all year next year too for all I care. I'm not gonna be a part of that. I may be asked to return and I may say that I will, but I am not planning on it.

I'll likely end up back in Gwangju at a school where I worked before and actually had a good experience. It was the one place I wanted to stay and the only place that couldn't keep me. But that's the way I roll. Luck is only with me in the casino it seems. I got downsized by them and that was the reason I ended up where I am now. But it appears as though they might have enough of a budget to UPsize me back in for this coming year. That would be nice. Even if that doesn't happen, I'm sure I'll find a place that'll take me. And I'm pretty sure I'll find something to complain about at THAT new place too. So you blog readers have that to look forward to. YAY!