Korean Job Discussion Forums

[edwardcatflap]

[Steelrails]

[some waygug-in]

It has less to do with culture than you think.

It's called reciprocity, you give a little here and get a little there.

If more employers understood the value of this concept, there would

be a lot fewer midnight runs.

[Konglishman]

Also, the importance of not having double standards and treating people fairly is another relevant factor in many cases.

[tideout]

I think the point of reciprocity is important. In a "perfect" world , the employee coming in adapts to the "host" country as that's "the way it should be" etc.. But the point made that if schools want to keep western teachers in public school programs, hogwons etc.. it is a two way street.

I should add I've seen this work though with what I consider an unnecessary level of tension - I've no doubt the parties on the other side had their own feelings at times.

I've always hated the shoot-the-bull with the principal while drinking game that's "required". Koreans will often confide they hate it as well. I've gone along at times and other times passed on it with some obvious concern from the "upper" command. My first school was very flexible and never made a big deal about it. The second school wasn't. I could have stayed at either school but decided not to for other reasons. Bottom line - I think it worked out to everyone's credit - it was in fact, pretty reciprocal. Everyone could have agreed to continue the relationship with only occasional feelings of 'wtf'!!

Hell, that may be as good as it gets anywhere right?

[Zyzyfer]

[tideout]

[Chaucer]

Just some thoughts on the above.

I had the same experience that so shocked Rodgers when I went back to talk at my high school. Not proof of anything, though. The real reason Rodgers was shocked is that he went from an "elite South Korean prep school" (Daewon--he had another article last May that mentioned the school's name) to a state university, where he'd have to earn the interest of his students.

And the university comments are spot on. Students doing NOTHING and then begging for an A--or, better (in a perverse way) begging for an A+.

Would any teachers at regular Korean middle or high schools care to talk about their students' general interest in the material? I'm thinking it approaches zero.

[Unposter]

This discussion is so over the place, I don't know which is the best place to start but:

1. Mangement, Training and Korean-style Individualism

From a Western perspective, if you want your employees to behave in a certain way, it starts with management, not the employee adapting to the environment. For example, at Google, they found that who is your manager had more to do with employee performance than anything an individual employee could do. So, they studied what their better managers did and then they educated their management.

What does this mean for Korea? If Korean hakwons, public schools and university's want to improve their English education programs, it starts with management practices, not employees. They need good managers that can teach their employees what they need to do to succeed.

Now, why doesn't this happen? My take is it is partially to do with the transience of the profession but part of it has to do with a Korean sense of individualism, especially at hakwons and universities. There is no sense of equality of outcome; it is all about finding a star teacher. Koreans succeed or don't succeed to the extent that they can get a start teacher to provide the "secrets" to success. While a "star" teacher may be educated and trained, it is not the education and the training that makes them a "star" teacher. Either they have that something special or they don't. And, if they have it, they are valuable and if they don't, well, you either move on, or you accept your crummy lot in life.

So, hakwons, public schools and universities do very little, if anything at all, to train their NESTs. Instead they are thrown in the pool and if they swim, they let them stick around and if they drown, they look for the next person to throw in the pool. In the meantime, Korean education becomes very unequal. Good teachers move on to good positions in welthier communities, where they ar paid better and the worse teachers are moved to worse positions in poorer communities and they cycle continues, whether NEST or Korean.

But, if there were more efforts at training and equality in outcome, things could be more different. Unfortunately, most Koreans will expect you to adapt but the reality is the best way for that to happen is for them to provide adequate training.

2. As for the OP, it is not language or culture that I think is important (at least at first) but it is a desire to teach and to see your students as students. A lot of people who come here to "teach," it is not that they don't know how to teach, but they don't really "want" to teach and they don't see their students as students and they don't think of thier job as a job. Of course, this is exacerbated because of the lack of training and some of the poor work environments that a lot of NESTs find themselves in. But, if Korea really wants to improve educational outcome, they need to find people who really want to teach and then provide them with adequate training.

3. As far as the article, it seems to contrast students between the U.S. and Korea in an extremely overly-general way. I think you will find good and bad students in both Korea and the U.S. There are plenty of Korean students who play with their cell phones and there are plentyof good American students, who are polite and study hard. These are not cultural traits; these are cultural stereotypes; and these are individual differences. Koreans may say work hard and some do but plenty don't. And, Americans may say something like work hard, play hard, but basically you will find about the same number who do.

And, if a bunch of students were just casually listening to his presentation, for all we know, his presentation wasn't all that worth listening to, minimumlly it had no bearing on their class or their test so why bother? Maybe, the prof was just being nice to him. Maybe, the students were really paying attention to him but he failed to understand it. It is all wonderfully circumstantial.

The only meaningful thing is that Americans would like to believe that they are falling behind the rest of the world and that the Asians are going to outwork them. And, that is why this letter to the editor was published; it represented a view that would upset people and bring in more letters and hopefully sell more papers. You can make as much or as little out of it as you want.

[nero]

[Mr. BlackCat]

So wait, the guy who wrote this compares an elite test-prep academy in a prestigious part of Seoul to some small University in the US? He's also comparing how Korean teens study right before the biggest test of their lives to how freshmen react to a random talk about something that probably doesn't interest them in the least. How on earth is that comparable? Either find a similar elite school in the US, or come to a Korean university. Apples and Oranges.

It's funny that the prof apparently told him he was only there for 5 kids. In a Korean university, only those 5 kids would have shown up. The other 15 would have turned up the day after the final begging the prof for an A because they're on scholarship and if they fail the class blah blah blah. Good thing, as the author assures us, Koreans don't whine. As anyone who's spent 5 minutes in Korea can attest, Koreans never whine. Nope, not at all.

As for the electronic devices: most of my elementary students have their phones out and try to use them at every opportunity. I've tried to talk with my school about it, but they say they have a 'right' to have them. They're moms actually call them in the middle of class and they answer. I've tried to stop them in the past, only to hear about complaints from parents. This is in a public school. What's worse, a few young adults trying to discretely use their devices during a college course, or a room full of pre-teens having free access to them all day?

I'm not trying to insult Koreans or anything here. I'm merely pointing out that there are just as many negatives, and positives, in both spheres. I agree with the above poster, both places have problems but you can't just look at a certain set of issues and declare one place better than the other. I mean, I could take the part about measuring their hair and declare that Americans are more independent, and value substance over trivial appearances. But I would never be so trite.

American adults have been decrying the fall of education and the laziness of the younger generation for approximately forever. My grandparents said it about their kids, my parents said it about us, we say it about kids these days. And you know what happens? DNA still gets mapped, the internet still gets developed and diseases still get cured. Jersey Shore and facebook aren't making American kids any dumber these days than rock music or Saturday Morning Cartoons were a few years ago. I'm not going to listen to one old prof at some random university complain about his students and decide the "Asians" are coming to get us.

And let's talk about those "Asians". Countries like Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong--and now China--have really pushed in the last half century to become strong economic forces in the world. But what exactly have these countries actually contributed to the modern world, independently? Did they invent major computer advances? Did they cure devastating diseases? Did they lead new space exploration? No, they got really good at doing exactly what Western countries have been doing. They manufacture well, they have built nice city streets and built impressive sky scrapers. Don't get me wrong, they've gotten very good at these things and it's benefited their citizens immensely. But until they start actually innovating and leading human progress, I wouldn't worry too much about them surpassing anyone. How can they when they only know how to replicate?

Again, I'm not trying to insult Korea or anyone. I'm just saying that it's funny to think a bunch of kids studying for a test in a rich school is representative of how this country is charging its way to world supremacy. Tell that to the hoards of kids in the PC bang next door till the wee hours, or my students who think they deserve an A simply for showing up. And we should tell the young inventor of the social media movement and those kids who just put a Legoman into spaces using household items that all American kids are lazy good-for-nothings.

[Moondoggy]

[mike1two]

[mike1two]

[Moondoggy]