If It Ain't Broken...
I'm teaching a lesson this week on "The Perfect School". Students get to be the new principal of their school, with unlimited access to funding and creativity. I thought it would be an appropriate topic considering they just finished a grueling 4 days straight of midterm exams and are now, with nary half a day's break, right back in the swing of things: class until 5pm and mandatory, supervised self-study until 10.
I was excited to see what kind of things they would get rid of outright, what they would decide only to tweak, and especially what would not even occur to them to change. It tickled me to tell them of our homeland where students go to school for 8 hours a day and then basically get to do whatever the fuck they want. Do you realize that students don't even play sports in this country? Unless they're continuing to develop a gift or talent discovered at a younger age when they actually had free time, their life from 16 to 19 is school and only school. High school here is a far cry from the juvenilely blissful indulgence of our own interests and curiosity that I'm sure we all took for granted.
But the more classes I do this lesson with, the more discouraged I get, and once again I find myself needing to slam the Korean education system. I explain the lesson, distribute the handout, go over the instructions and example questions, ask if they understand, receive the resoundingly monotonous "yes", and let them go to work. The instructions I give them are as follows: write whatever the hell you want that you think would make school better. Literally.
Instead, I get one of two things during the individual work phase of the exercise:
1) Despite my instructions that they can write anything they want (free ice cream at lunch, 10 minute classes, pop star teachers), the student has numbered the example questions and is answering each of them with one word answers. "What kind of teachers would you hire?" "Handsome." "How would you make classes more interesting?" "Colorful (classroom)." "How long should classes be?" "Short."
2) The student has sat there staring at a blank piece of paper the entire time, and this accounts for almost 1/4 of the class. As with any assignment where they're not doing work, I walk over and try to get them enthused. I joke with them, and they say "ok, ok" and pick up their pen and hold it against the paper. I walk away and come back 5 minutes later to see that still nothing has been written.
I could understand this if I was teaching a class on grammar or some obscure aspect of American culture that had no impact on their lives, but essentially this class is designed for them to list WHY they hate their lives and what it would take to make it better. This is me giving them a genie in a lamp, ready to make them Sultana, and them staring at it impassively, waiting for the bell to ring so they can leave.
I don't think these are bad students, not in the sense of being misbehaved or disinterested. I thought and still think this is a lesson that would work with our traditional conception of "bad kids". I can't speak to the experience of being a teacher in the states, but all my memories of the bad kids in school were ones who basically preferred talking to learning. Nothing was really that impossibly difficult in middle school or high school, it was just a question of our relative attention spans. But I feel like this exercise would cater to even the lowest of the low level students. It is inconceivable to me that you can give someone in prison an assignment saying "write down what you would do if you were set free today and had enough money to do anything", and having them throw their hands up in the air in frustration at how hard the question is. Anyone with emotions or an opinion should be able to do it.
That's why I don't think these girls are bad students. They're zombies.
More or less every response from every student reflected the third item in the aforesaid categories of expected responses: obliviousness to problems. Now before you chastise me for judging what does and does not constitute a "problem" for a student in a foreign culture, let me explain. The reason why their answers showed that they don't know why they are miserable is because their answers did not actually solve the problems they are having. They were either outrageous fantasies or trite, self-indulgent desires. Being able to use cellphones at any time during the day was a unanimous response. "But then in class you'll just be talking to your friends or texting and never pay attention," I say. Blank stares and then, "It's ok, it's ok. We love cellphone!"
Now take, for example, the criteria to be a good teacher:
1) Handsome
2) Kind
3) Fair
4) Tall
These are the top 4 answers from the last 3 classes, a sample size of about 100 students. I typically ask "What about 'smart'?" To which every class has vehemently responded "NO!" After some consultation with my co-teachers, I find out the reason the students are giving is "Smart teachers are arrogant and selfish. They expect too much from us."
The Korean education system has bred the creativity right out of their students. When your only answer to how your 14 hour school day can be improved is "Make the classroom more colorful", then you, m'am, are a zombie; a brainwashed shell of a human being. School is not a place where you come to learn, for your own interest or personal improvement or whatever. And it's not a place where you need to have conscious thought. School is a place where you come and people you have no respect for throw as many facts at you as they can and hope some of it sticks to the inside of your skull. Whatever sticks, that's how smart you are, and that's what determines everything you can be in life.
I was excited to see what kind of things they would get rid of outright, what they would decide only to tweak, and especially what would not even occur to them to change. It tickled me to tell them of our homeland where students go to school for 8 hours a day and then basically get to do whatever the fuck they want. Do you realize that students don't even play sports in this country? Unless they're continuing to develop a gift or talent discovered at a younger age when they actually had free time, their life from 16 to 19 is school and only school. High school here is a far cry from the juvenilely blissful indulgence of our own interests and curiosity that I'm sure we all took for granted.
But the more classes I do this lesson with, the more discouraged I get, and once again I find myself needing to slam the Korean education system. I explain the lesson, distribute the handout, go over the instructions and example questions, ask if they understand, receive the resoundingly monotonous "yes", and let them go to work. The instructions I give them are as follows: write whatever the hell you want that you think would make school better. Literally.
Instead, I get one of two things during the individual work phase of the exercise:
1) Despite my instructions that they can write anything they want (free ice cream at lunch, 10 minute classes, pop star teachers), the student has numbered the example questions and is answering each of them with one word answers. "What kind of teachers would you hire?" "Handsome." "How would you make classes more interesting?" "Colorful (classroom)." "How long should classes be?" "Short."
2) The student has sat there staring at a blank piece of paper the entire time, and this accounts for almost 1/4 of the class. As with any assignment where they're not doing work, I walk over and try to get them enthused. I joke with them, and they say "ok, ok" and pick up their pen and hold it against the paper. I walk away and come back 5 minutes later to see that still nothing has been written.
I could understand this if I was teaching a class on grammar or some obscure aspect of American culture that had no impact on their lives, but essentially this class is designed for them to list WHY they hate their lives and what it would take to make it better. This is me giving them a genie in a lamp, ready to make them Sultana, and them staring at it impassively, waiting for the bell to ring so they can leave.
I don't think these are bad students, not in the sense of being misbehaved or disinterested. I thought and still think this is a lesson that would work with our traditional conception of "bad kids". I can't speak to the experience of being a teacher in the states, but all my memories of the bad kids in school were ones who basically preferred talking to learning. Nothing was really that impossibly difficult in middle school or high school, it was just a question of our relative attention spans. But I feel like this exercise would cater to even the lowest of the low level students. It is inconceivable to me that you can give someone in prison an assignment saying "write down what you would do if you were set free today and had enough money to do anything", and having them throw their hands up in the air in frustration at how hard the question is. Anyone with emotions or an opinion should be able to do it.
That's why I don't think these girls are bad students. They're zombies.
More or less every response from every student reflected the third item in the aforesaid categories of expected responses: obliviousness to problems. Now before you chastise me for judging what does and does not constitute a "problem" for a student in a foreign culture, let me explain. The reason why their answers showed that they don't know why they are miserable is because their answers did not actually solve the problems they are having. They were either outrageous fantasies or trite, self-indulgent desires. Being able to use cellphones at any time during the day was a unanimous response. "But then in class you'll just be talking to your friends or texting and never pay attention," I say. Blank stares and then, "It's ok, it's ok. We love cellphone!"
Now take, for example, the criteria to be a good teacher:
1) Handsome
2) Kind
3) Fair
4) Tall
These are the top 4 answers from the last 3 classes, a sample size of about 100 students. I typically ask "What about 'smart'?" To which every class has vehemently responded "NO!" After some consultation with my co-teachers, I find out the reason the students are giving is "Smart teachers are arrogant and selfish. They expect too much from us."
The Korean education system has bred the creativity right out of their students. When your only answer to how your 14 hour school day can be improved is "Make the classroom more colorful", then you, m'am, are a zombie; a brainwashed shell of a human being. School is not a place where you come to learn, for your own interest or personal improvement or whatever. And it's not a place where you need to have conscious thought. School is a place where you come and people you have no respect for throw as many facts at you as they can and hope some of it sticks to the inside of your skull. Whatever sticks, that's how smart you are, and that's what determines everything you can be in life.
posted by Uzura at 10:43 PM
1 Comments:
Interesting. We have the same problem over here in Malaysia. I guess the problem exist in almost ALL asian countries, the education system actually breeds zombies. But it wasn't so when I was a student. I guess the economic boom Malaysia has witness may have contributed to the higher expectation of ex-yuppie parents towards thier so called 'gifted' children, that only grades matter these days, the passport to the best private higher education institute thier money could afford. All this happens in a country which does not really give credit to inventors and thinkers (our national pattening creditions are appalling)whose sole intentions are to churn out pencil pushers that later turns out to be white collar criminals.
(You're an avid blogger, nice to know, unlike me, who only post when I feel like it :)
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