Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bucheon bum]

I am presently in grad school. A friend/classmate of mine was interested in doing "Alternative Spring Break" in Russia, and it seemed like a good idea to me, so I went to a info session about it.

Well let's see... The presentation started off well. The head of the program gave a decent overview of the general program and the application steps. Alas, when she got the individual trips, things went downwards.

First was the Russia trip. The leader for that destination came up to speak. Her presentation: "I really don't know anything about Russia. I do have experience as a leader and with traveling. I'd love to go to St. Petersburg and Moscow the last weekend we're there. Oh and my parents are buying me 'Rosetta Stone' [a language program]." Hmm, St. Petersburg and Moscow in a weekend. She might want to look at a map. The community service portion would be in a city 250 KM north of Moscow. Isn't that like living in Indianapolis and saying, "Yeah, let's go to Chicago and New York this weekend!" And great, nice to know you'll know an ounce of Russian before we arrive thanks to your parents' generosity. Notice how there was no mention of community service in her presentation.

Other highlights:

1. Peru is apparently in Central America now.

2. A city at an elevation of 9,000 ft is "cool." I'm not sure if the speaker meant that literally or figuratively. Perhaps both, but I think that would be giving her a little too much credit.

3. Costa Rica, a country in the tropics, apparently is colder in the north than south. I think this would be news to Costa Ricans. The country also does not have a military, which makes Costa Rica that much better than the rest of the world. Lastly, there is no "anti-american semitism there." So I guess Costa Ricans don't have any qualms with American Jews? I don't know.

4. Ghana is the wealthiest country in Africa. Did something happen to South Africa that I am unaware of? Did all of North Africa somehow break away from the rest of the continent? I guess Nigeria has finally dissolved into various countries now.

5. Ghana and Salvador, Brazil are two hubs of slavery. Yes, you heard me: are. I didn't know slavery was still going on. That being said, their connections to slavery apparently contribute to a "vibrant culture."

6. Speaking of "vibrant culture", it turns out that Russia, Ghana, Brazil, Costa Rica, Thailand, Guatemala, Peru, and China all have "vibrant cultures." Good to know.

Now hey, I understand if geography and knowledge of the world isn't your strength but when you are leading an international program you should at least know about the countries you're involved with.

I guess it was just another reminder of how bad people are with geography and knowing the world outside their own.

[kermo]

Put them in a room with my students, and they'll seem like genuises.

Marking exams today:



The question: "How much did it cost?"

The answer: "fifint-tive"

[RACETRAITOR]

[moosehead]

some of the best advice i've ever received:

"expect incompetence"


i think of this when i hear stories like this one from the OP

it's a shame, really. too many people buy their education rather than earn it.

[Hollywoodaction]

[arjuna]

The World According to Student Bloopers
Richard Lederer
St. Paul's School
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter- ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be- fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac- beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with- out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

[jg]

Actually, that bit about Brazil still having slavery is spot on. 2 years ago about 5000 people were rescued from "slavery" as described by one of Brazil's own ministries. Most tourists don't visit the giant farming concerns and mining concerns where it takes place, and it's been estimated that the amount of people living in what the UN and Amnesty Intl describe as "slave" conditions in Brazil alone is in the 10's of thousands.

Slavery is alive and well in Africa too.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4536085.stm

and the other


Brazil finds biggest case of modern-day slavery

( 2003-09-02 09:40) (Agencies)

Brazilian authorities said on Monday they had freed about 800 slave workers at a coffee farm in Bahia state, the largest discovery since a clampdown on the practice began in the 1990s.

Some 200 workers were also found at another farm with appalling conditions, including no proper housing and inadequate food and sanitary conditions, said Marcelo Campos, an adviser at the Labor Ministry's special unit to monitor slavery in Brazil's vast interior.

"It is the biggest find of this crime we have had since 1995," Campos said, referring to when the unit was created.

He said one worker died of a heart attack when the inspectors turned up at the farm where the 800 workers were found, about 70 of them seriously ill. Another 200 workers were discovered at the second farm, which had a different owner, in the poor interior of the northeastern Bahia state.

Before 1995, Brazil had no real policy to fight a practice that usually involves landlords hiring poor workers in a different region of the country and then transporting them thousands of miles to their isolated farms.

The workers are not paid and have no money to return to their homes. Sometimes they are prevented by armed guards from leaving the farms, where they are often not given proper food or housing.

The farm owners have so far not been charged, but Labor Ministry officials said they would team up with public prosecutors and try them for keeping workers in slave-like conditions. If convicted, the owners could face up to four years in prison.

Campos said the farmers would also have to pay the workers decent wages retroactively.

Since coming to power in January, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to end the practice. An estimated 25,000 people still live in slave-like conditions in the country that was the last to formally abolish slavery in the Americas, in 1888.

[flakfizer]

The "vibrant culture" thing is not unique to the people presenting their spring break trips. I have not read or heard of a country's description in the last 10 years where the words "vibrant culture" or "rich culture" or "rich history" were not used.

Kermo, I recently gave a listening test in which the speaker mentioned that "some insects use vibration" to communicate. More than one student thought the speaker had said, "sex vibration."

[anyway]

Arjuna, thanks for the gut wrenching laughter. Now, how many future politicians were among those students?

[bucheon bum]

[arjuna]

[IncognitoHFX]

Well, this is an American classroom, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

[normalcyispasse]

Arjuna --

I nearly spat my water on the monitor a few times. Nicely done.

[Bibbitybop]

Education in the USA does a horrible job of teaching students about the rest of the world.


Recently, the British government wrote a report about education on the Isle of Wight and spelled it "Isle of White" the entire time. So you Brits are just as dumb as us yanks! Well, not quite as dumb.

[Atavistic]