Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JongnoGuru]

(There's bound to be a thread somewhere on the lousy content of many ESL teaching materials, but I'm not spending another 10 minutes hunting for it. So...)

I'm hardly a proponent of political correctness, but some of this stuff had me shaking my head.

Amongst the happy, bouncy, colourful drawings of children, animals & toys in my girfriend's niece's English study books (from her hagwon, apparently) were these eye-popping items:

1. A short, dumpy, freckle-faced little white girl sits at her desk, staring forlornly at photos on the wall of her tall, thin, Barbie Doll-like school friends and family members. (In one photo, her Mom even does that silly rabbit-ears thingy behind the girl's head. )

It reads:
"All my friends are tall, but I am not. I am short.
All my friends are thin, but I am not. I am fat.
I am so short and so fat. What can I do?"

Hmm... I'm thinking "Crash diet? That gory leg-lengthening surgery height-conscious Korean girls get? Suicide? Accept who you are?..."

Ahh, no need! Here comes a chubby, floating, angel/fairy-godmother-type presence in a clown suit and waving a magic wand -- POOF! The once- dumpy girl is now thin! (And her freckles have disappeared, too! ). She's still short, but hey -- let's not be greedy.

So, children, what did we learn today?
We learned "short & fat = bad" and "tall & thin = good". Great.
We also learned a valuable lesson about self-esteem, and how important it is to have a chubby, floating, angel/fairy-godmother with a magic wand around to solve life's mistakes. ("Like yours, Betty -- yes, you! Stop trying to hide behind Jimmy -- he's much too thin, and you're much too fat.)

2) Now it's time to learn "handsome & ugly", and to help us with our lesson, here's Mike. Mike's a tall, good-looking Caucasian surfer-dood with his Ray-Bans(TM) propped up sportily on his head. Mike is definitely "handsome", isn't he? HANDSOME

Now let's meet Fred. Fred is short, he's black and, and although he's black, he's definitely got freckles (a clear sign of homeliness). Fred, go stand over there under the "UGLY" banner, please. Thank you.

Hi, Younghee! Younghee is a little girl from Korea, and she's certainly "PRETTY".

Uh-oh -- here come's Joyce. That big broad nose and black skin of hers can only mean one thing: "UGLY"!

There are other examples. In all, the "ugly" (and "bald"!) people are all black. The "handsome" kids are white boys, the "pretty" kids are Korean females, except for Judy (a real cheerleader floozie-type white girl with big bossoms). And if you're "fat" & "short", you're undoubtedly a white girl.

I should point out that I didn't search for this material -- it just happened to be the issue of some book my girlfriend's neice brought up to the house when her family visited. I'm dying to get my hands on more of these, though.

The Guru

[Son Deureo!]

I remember when I worked for the Kid's Herald chain they had a series of vocabulary cards that they hung on a string around the kindie kids' necks. A kind of "word of the day" thing. Not a bad idea in and of itself, but...

The "ugly" card had a picture of a black women with nothing particularly ugly about her. The director wouldn't do anything about it when the foreign teachers complained, so we confiscated every ugly card we saw and explained to them what was wrong with it.

And then I replaced the pictures in the "handsome" cards with pictures of my beautiful smiling face.

[peppermint]

The grade 5 and 6 elementary school English texts features a dorky kid with glasses, who's the butt of jokes, and a black child who looks very little Sambo ish. On the CD rom, the black boy is given a girl's voice to add insult to injury.