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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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 Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:35 am Post subject: Teaching English in Korea in the 60s. |
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Here's a neat little article I came across from a 1965 Korea Journal that gives one university professor's impression of teaching here. A few excerpts:
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What is less easy to sympathize with [than economic considerations] is the acceptance of an appreciable number of students of the pressure and their using it to avoid 'unnecessary' work. The willingness of the faculty to assist graduation by generous marking has the deplorable effect in class of making many students complaisant towards their work. Why work, after all, if examination passing is more or less automatic? Students have frequently come to me with their names and vital statistics written on a piece of paper and asked me to give them an 'A' or a 'B' grade because they had been unable (or unwilling?) to attend any classes during the semester.
Most frustrating of all in this respect is what my friend and I have called 'the conspiracy of mediocrity.' This is a description of an apparent tendency to control the amount and the quality of work done in class in order to facilitate revision for, and the passing of, examinations. The 'conspiracy' manifests itself in complaints that work is too difficult, failure to do assignments, the arranging of class picnics for weekdays instead of weekends and numerous delaying and diversionary tactics in class---the favourite being to ask one to tell the class all about England and English university life. This is made the more annoying by the fact that there are many excellent students in class who went to get on but find that their loyalty to their classmates is stronger. |
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Naturally enough this contributes to the casual approach towards study that is often found in class, to the ever-ready cutting of classes by all students for slight excuses like inter-university football matches (even though few students from the class may actually go to watch the game), to the attitude that if there is a street demonstration in the morning then there can be no classes in the afternoon, to the slipshod work that is done during the five minutes before, and the first five minutes in, the class in the name of assignments and finally to the feeling on the part of the teacher that the students are for these reasons schoolchildren not students.
There is another totally different handicap that students suffer when learning English at university, especially from a foreign teacher. It is the totally inadequate instruction given in middle and high schools in the practical use of English. Students, through little fault of their own other than lack of private initiative, are unable to read English quickly enough for university purposes. When I asked some graduate school students to read a short book as background material for my lectures one of the students said that it would take a fortnight to do so. This I think represents average ability. |
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Few students have a sufficient mastery of the language to understand a lecture given in English. Most classwork has to be done on the blackboard---what I wrote on the blackboard constituted the whole of what a sizable number of my students learned---and literature and other texts had to be selected according to whether they could be conveniently duplicated or not. All these are very constricting to a foreigner who initially expects to be able to do much more advanced work. It is a little depressing to reflect when one marks examination papers that all that has been understood of one's lectures h as been the notes one wrote on the blackboard, and that therefore one might just as well have written up a term's notes, have had them duplicated and distributed, and then simply not to have bothered to hold the classes.
The answers to the problems that these handicaps cause are hard to find, and it is quite possible that I never found them. Inattentiveness in class I ignored though other professors say that they throw daydreamers out of the classroom. Noisiness, a perpetual problem, and petty cheating during class assignments---students here do not look upon work done communally as dishonest, let alone see that it does them individually little good---one had to stop schoolmaster fashion and to me it was a loathsome business.
Most of the work I had to do was under the vague title 'English Conversation' and I know that the university administrations had little idea of what they wanted me to do. One thinks immediately of small classes and interesting discussions, but in practice one is foiled by the large size of most classes---classes sometimes contained up to sixty or seventy students---and the almost negligible grasp of spoken English by the majority of the students. The better students often implored me to have discussions in conversation classes, but less than a semester of this---my first---showed me that the discussions were held primarily between myself and a handful of good students, and the weaker brethren, even when called upon to speak, seldom said more than that they could not speak English very well.
There is in fact almost no way to bridge the large gap between the able and the poor that exists in the average class. Many people sing the praises of sentence-pattern study, but, though most of my students needed it, most thought it was too elementary after seven or eight years of English. |
http://tinyurl.com/5dz3qz
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/11/must-read-account-of-teaching-english.html |
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curlygirl
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
Location: Pundang, Seohyeon dong
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:04 am Post subject: |
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| In other words "bugger all has changed!" |
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cdninkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:37 am Post subject: |
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If this person managed to maintain their sanity, it could only have been through strong anti-psychotic drugs.
It does make me wonder though: why would someone want to move to a country as poor as Korea back then? Imagine the difficulties with dating! Or the staring! Or the lack of Western foods (I complain about no cottage cheese; imagine what that poor guy went through)! |
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IAMAROBOT
Joined: 16 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:42 am Post subject: |
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| I don't teach in university, but I noticed this something like this when I had to teach the other Korean public school teachers. Are they just not used to being challenged? |
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ChopChaeJoe
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:42 am Post subject: |
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| cdninkorea wrote: |
It does make me wonder though: why would someone want to move to a country as poor as Korea back then? |
I know people who work for peanuts (for an NGO) in Hati and Rwanda. Flashbacks of Marlowe on the boat, this too once was a dark place. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:43 am Post subject: |
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I would imagine dating would be much easier in the '60s; the girls would be far easier to bribe into being starstruck with you. Plus, Korean popular music was far cooler back then.
On the other hand, military dictatorship, violent revolutions with tanks rolling through Seoul, curfew, laws on skirt length, visa problems for Koreans leaving the country, yadda yadda yadda. |
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Davew125
Joined: 11 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 5:46 am Post subject: |
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before i came over here i worked with a fella who was one of a tiny handful of white people in Korea in the 60's. He wasnt a teacher, but helped install the first computer systems for the railway network. he was here just over a year ( and live in a old school railway carriage, with no heating! ). He showed me some pics and things (including a hand writtten 'free transport pass' from whoever was in charge back then - president (?) ) Seoul was about as different as you can imagine but he also described the awful beer ( think pre Hite and Cass !! ) rotten, pickeld a cabbage and constantly being pointed and stared at as he walked around the cities.
as an earlier post stated, some things really haven't changed at all. |
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exit86
Joined: 17 May 2006
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:05 am Post subject: |
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Yup, it has been like this actually up until quite recently actually.
And, just think, these uni graduates are the ones in power now--
the administrators, the bosses, the uni deans, dept. managers,
presidents, etc.
Ever wonder why your English dept. dean can't speak a f'ing word of English? Here's your answer.
Absolutely absurd.
Nothing like having a boss with a PH.D he or she bought, who
thinks they are a better form of human being than you because of it,
and who gets paid two or three times more than you for teaching three or four times less than you, who has absolutely no damn idea about the English language whatsoever. What a f'ing joke. |
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Ukon
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:11 am Post subject: |
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Naturally enough this contributes to the casual approach towards study that is often found in class, to the ever-ready cutting of classes by all students for slight excuses like inter-university football matches (even though few students from the class may actually go to watch the game), to the attitude that if there is a street demonstration in the morning then there can be no classes in the afternoon, to the slipshod work that is done during the five minutes before, and the first five minutes in, the class in the name of assignments and finally to the feeling on the part of the teacher that the students are for these reasons schoolchildren not students.
Sounds like most college students on planet earth....this also reminds me of my high school and college spanish classes...
Nothing new here.... |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| It seems to me that it really hasn't negatively impacted Korea's development. It goes from dirt poor to top 13 or so, not too bad if you ask me. Just let the Koreans do what they want to do. |
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Straphanger
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
Location: Chilgok, Korea
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:21 am Post subject: |
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| ChopChaeJoe wrote: |
| cdninkorea wrote: |
It does make me wonder though: why would someone want to move to a country as poor as Korea back then? |
I know people who work for peanuts (for an NGO) in Hati and Rwanda. Flashbacks of Marlowe on the boat, this too once was a dark place. |
The Horror.
I'd give real blood for one of those jobs. Tried like hell to get to Khartoum before I came here. Maybe it's still in the cards, maybe not, but this is fine enough until then. |
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DCJames
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| jvalmer wrote: |
| It seems to me that it really hasn't negatively impacted Korea's development. It goes from dirt poor to top 13 or so, not too bad if you ask me. Just let the Koreans do what they want to do. |
Yeah, let them do what they want to do, but don't expect them to speak a lick of English.  |
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Louie
Joined: 12 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:46 am Post subject: |
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The cool thing back then was that if you were American, you were allowed onbase- no worries about security or anything because there were no threats of terrorism as the bases face now.
A person would just show their passport and they were allowed through the gate to enjoy the canteen (eating American food), going to the movie theater, hang out at the local club for a real American beer, etc.
Things changed alot in the late 80's-early 90's when they started to people to show some kind of affiliation to the military before being allowed onbase.
Oh! Also, if an American was already over there and were able to get onbase- all they needed to do was head over to the personnel departmant and was guaranteed a job...simple as that...... |
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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| 범프. |
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victorology
Joined: 10 Sep 2007
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