Korean Job Discussion Forums

[PatrickGHBusan]

[liveinkorea316]

I have to agree with Shifty on that one. There is no need to be condescending towards the many great teachers who thoroughly enjoy their experiences in hagwons and Public Schools. Such a statement says more about yourself than those you intend to ridicule.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[jzrossef]

[enchoo]

The school market is approaching oversaturation, but there are still good jobs to be had if you keep trying. I do notice that there seems to be slightly more UNI positions than in the past, but you might have to have a master's degree and/or prior university experience. Yes absolutely ask for more than 2.3 million based on your prior experience if you have strong references, even if the market is saturated.

Tell the 1.5 million recruiter UP YOURS!!!

[earthquakez]

[quote="jzrossef"]
While I can see how government politics may skew up the history exam, I find it difficult to believe that multiple choice questions are like that for more fact-based subjects like science and math. The fact that Korea is among the leading nations when it comes to sophisticated technologies like semiconductors, computer chips, automobiles and whatnot gives a good indication that math and science in Korea is not staggering behind.

The technology issue is down to govt policies of keeping industry onshore which is wise. Korean obtained much of its know how about semiconductors etc by borrowing from Japan which in turn took the technology the west gave it after WW2. Korean kids learn levels of Maths and Science that in some western countries are not taught to kids at the same age because of the ridicuous 'too hard' notion.

Our perception of a good percentage is meaningless in Korea. While 85% may be a good mark compared to average American/Canadian grade, it may mean little in Korea where most applicants have a grade in 80s, if not in 90s. How impressive your mark is depends on the average mark, not from 50% passing grade.

When you have multiple choice exams as the rule in middle school and high school, then there is the accompanying reliance on rote learning and the element of luck. I've sat in classrooms and watched my middle school then high school kids do exams again and again and yes, they were all multiple choice. Korean schoolkids don 't have to problem solve and analyse then put together a coherent view of it in Science and Maths in their school tests.

And there are always those who get through on dumb luck. A grade in the 80s in non multiple choice tests such as Science/Maths papers where you have to describe step by step processes and do calculations then write clearly about these things is more difficul to get than in a multiple choice test where you have answers to choose from.

Likewise Humanities subjects such as language tests where you actually have to write an essay under test conditions to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject. Or History tests where you don't choose a date from a number of them but have to write about society or politics and explain why you hold the opinion you do all the while incorporating the facts of that time/that society.

I think even the so-called thick and ignorant Koreans understand this reality. 

You're taking liberties with people's words there. Later I'll be pulling you up on the rest of what was initially a reasonable post's slide into assumptions and good ol Korean myths. I have to do something better now.

[jzrossef]

[liveinkorea316]

I don't like public education systems in any country. But I do have to agree that in Asia they tend to be worse than in the West. While almost no education systems run by the goernment are able to properly teach people think well...in the West at least they are further ahead in attempting to develop the whole person and their individuality. In Asian countries the focus is mainly on passing exams. In the West it is not.

In an ideal world elementary and highschool education would be privatised and people would seek out teachers and schools that suited them. Universities likewise would use their own methods to recruit talented students. Employers would also rely more on someone's abilitiesand achievements than just where they went to School such as is the case in Korea. In the West people are not judged as much by their job as they are in Asia. This is a cultural issue which has implications for youth and education.

Until government stops pushing peoples' faces into school books and lets them discopver education on their own, we will be stuck with the mess we have currently. And until Korean culture finds a way to judge people other than where they went to school and where they work....their kids will continue to suffer all the way through a brutal school system.

[earthquakez]

[quote="jzrossef The fact that Korea is among the leading nations when it comes to sophisticated technologies like semiconductors, You might be surprised. Japanese may fare better in statistic numbers� but the truth is grim in Japan as well. I was there.

Regardless of how good Koreans are at making semi conductors etc the technology did not originate there. Koreans, like the Japanese, are good at copying rather than creating.Koreans did not invent any modern technology. You're making a connection with how good Korean kids are at Maths and Science but that is not relevant to the issue.

National policy of developing Korea's industries has resulted in Korea having such industries instead of allowing others to sell to them. It's wise as I observed. It's also much easier to develop a country and its industries when you have decades of dictatorship to impose your will on a nation and a corporate state that will implement your programs whenever and however the one party government wants.

Hagwon teachers don�t enjoy that luxury for that reason. They are mercenaries. They�re paid and hired for their children� and there are no consequences to their grade or social status� especially if they are foreigners. Not a reality many foreigners would be able to swallow, but Koreans are not completely ignorant, stupid or just plain na�ve. One must tread carefully when making judgments. Truth gets much complicated, and it takes a real patience with some effort to look at the bigger picture.

You'd do well to follow your own advice there. The ol axe to grind about foreigners working in hagwons is getting blunt and there are many foreigners who care about their students in the hagwons where they work and work hard but are subjected to constantly changing expectations, irrational work practises and above all are foreigners so are not useful to Korean parents generally except when they want their kid to study abroad or do a homestay.

You 'were there' in Japan? Congratulations. I worked in Japan and another Asian country for over a decade and I noted that Japanese parents and the parents in the other country demonstrated kindness, generosity and yes respect towards foreign teachers who cared about their kids, gave of themselves outside the classroom etc. I've noticed that lacking from Korean parents as the norm and I don't see why you should blame foreigners for the utilitarian values of Korean society.

Koreean hagwon teachers are mercenaries? I doubt that in most cases. I know Korean hagwon teachers who put in a great deal of time and energy for pay that is nowhere near what some of the K teachers coasting along in public schools get. They also have the added stress of the whims of some ill mannered parents who blame them for their kids' lack of work ethic or the fact that hagwons also serve as a way of getting schoolkids out of the home.

I have seen 'hard working' K teachers middle and high school style. As many foreigners on the eslcafe have observed from within the school system, lack of organisational skills plays a significant part in the notion that Korean teachers there are 'too busy'. Taking naps at school is a part of Korean school culture that I've never encountered anywhere else but I suppose it accounts for why the sleepers are then rushing around after saying they have no time.

I'm one of many foreign teachers who have handled English classes on their own in middle and high school therefore giving 22 plus free hours to Korean co teachers per week.The fact that K co teachers forego their duties there and have that big extra time per week doesn't seem to make a jot of difference in their tendency to be disorganised and thus heap up unnecessary work for themselves. The farcical meetings where a Principal or Vice Principal rants on while Korean teachers are playing computer games or whatever says something about the timewasting culture.

Here�s a new insight for you. We are the mercenaries that profit from these poor single mothers. The least we can do is to help them out as much as we can instead of laughing at them. Teachers should not be flying across Pacific Ocean to judge and ridiculing Koreans. Teachers should be coming to offer their services which are not readily available in Korean public education. We are there to help them, to not only teach those English but to introduce and share that there are other ideas, values and whatnot.

Here's news for you - call yourself a mercenary if you like but understand that there are many of us here who do not fit that description regardless of your assertions. 'Poor single mothers' in Korea are not being laughed at by foreigners like myself - I rightly wonder why somebody in that position must go into debt to keep up appearances and hagwon education to an extent is about appearing to have the money to spend. Just like hagwon education for too many Korean parents of younger schoolkids seems to function as a glorified babysitting service.

It�s perfectly natural for Koreans to overvalue their ways and eye the foreigners in suspicion, especially when they were almost always used or attacked by neighboring nations. Rarely the Japanese government since the beginning came to Korean seashores in peace, but with piracy and conquest. Russians came to Korea in the name of communist manifesto, and we know that didn�t work out well. Americans and French came to Korea not with peace and goodwill, but with their modern warships.

Yes, it's always 'perfectly natural' for Koreans to be xenophobic, isn't it? Therein lies much of the problem. Nationalistic mythmaking handicaps countries and societies in different ways. In Korea the persistence of the Korea as Victim myth results in officially sanctioned attitudes, behaviour and legal norms that are in direct conflict with Korea's wish to be accepted as a major player in a diverse world where the movement of people and cultures into other countries is now the norm.

As for the regurgitation of the dangerous foreigners menacing Korea theme, Koreans need to wake up to the fact that the world's history from the earliest times has been about invasion, conquest, the predominance of some groups, then their fall, the mixing of races and ethncities as the by product of these constant conflicts as well populations changing through constant exploration and the opening up of countries. All the world's peoples have experienced this and in many cases much more harshly and for more prolonged periods than Koreans.

While Koreans have mixed reviews about China, their recent rise to power is making Koreans nervous with their increasing interference with North Korea, their overfishing crisis, and their growing resistance to Korean culture and economic relationships. (Not to mention all the pollution we get from China) While there are some promising signs in southeastern Asia, Korea are very alone and without friends� something that they desperately need when they are other growing concerns as it is� especially the scarcity of many raw materials.

China has propped up North Korea since its inception. It has been North Korea's choice to be a totalitarian regime that at the same time is in a shambles because of a fedual like state where the elites thrive in the capital while the rest are left to basically rot if they're not engaged in farming for the elites.

Yes, South Korea needs friends. But again the same contradictory behaviour comes into play. If South Korea wants real friends and real dialogue with powers like China it is going to have to scrap that Dae Min Hanguk nonsense and quit its aspirations for a 21st Korean pseudo empire supposedly based on what ethnic tribes did back in the day. Ethnic tribes who would never have called themselves Korean and some of whom were not ethnically the same people who are the majority in Korea today.

It is also going to have to scrap the tribal type hating on Japan. If other nations did what Korea sees as normal, no European nation would be able to co exist such is the wartorn history of European neighbours. That they can move on and Korea can't says much about Korea's failings to develope a national maturity.

And when many Koreans faces uncertain financial future ever since the IMF and recent world recession, it�s an eyesore to have foreigners with much loose discipline and work ethics but still ends up with considerable income.

Of course. Again Koreans are the only people who face an uncertain financial future. The US certainly does but citizens and legal residents manage to know that illegal Korean residents are one of the highest numbers of illegals in the US without running media and other campaigns against them and justifying their scapegoating.

As for the usual rant against foreign English teachers attempting to be disguised as logic, there are countries where you get nearly as much on welfare per month as you get working in Korea. It's not some bountiful place. I've always worked the same hours (including the unpaid work in Korea) or more in Korea for far less money than any other job I've worked in elsewhere.

Too bad the elements of rationality in your posts are spoiled by immature assertions.

[earthquakez]

[jzrossef]

[earthquakez]

No thanks, I don't need fake apologies about your supposedly 'sinking' a level. You've done quite well all on your own.

[quote="jzrossef. And when many Koreans faces uncertain financial future ever since the IMF and recent world recession, it�s an eyesore to have foreigners with much loose discipline and work ethics but still ends up with considerable income.]

You'd be lucky to have my attitude or that of most people on here. Those kinds of comments say it all about you. Nail in the coffin.

I enjoyed your comment about 'how sorry' you are that supposedly 'thing didn't work out for me'. What are you babbling on about?

You're somebody who says you are in Canada wondering what life in Korea is like on your other posts. I suggest you learn something about working in Korea or other Asian countries before you attempt to advise seasoned teachers with long and successful employment histories in 4 countries.

English teaching in Asia doesn't bring in great money. That's the point. Those of us who do it for a living enjoy it for varying reasons and if financial gain was the motivator of long term teachers like myself, I wouldn't have done it for so long.

The point of money in Korea came up because you used a nasty little Korean stereotype of affluent, 'loose' foreign English teachers flaunting their wealth gained at the expense of Koreans. Most hagwon and public school/private school jobs pay between 2 million and 2.5 million won. Before tax. Before the unfavourable currency exchanges.

Most of those teachers are not on 2.5 million won, in fact 2.3 is about the best they do. When the exchange rate is bad some are earning 1,800 or so US dollars. Hardly a great salary.

Enough to live on and save if you are careful but not a reason for Koreans to 'naturally' resent foreigners and make judgements about their morals because some enjoy social activities and drinking. Just like Koreans do.

On other threads one minute you claim to live in Korea and say the water is safe etc then you say 'If I live in Korea' on another thread and then ask if you'll be taxed on vitamins you bring in your luggage.

Another nail in the coffin.

[jzrossef]

[jzrossef]

[earthquakez]

There are few things sadder on forums than trolls who don't know they're trolls. Take the hint.