Good Advice

Student: Teacher, I have a nosebleed.

Other Student: Don't pick your nose.

Machiavelli, Continued

So after our discussion of Machiavelli a couple of weeks ago, it appears one of my students took the lessons to heart. She actually went online and purchased an English translation of The Prince. I told her this was by far the coolest thing a student has ever done in one of my classes.

I am somewhat concerned though, as this girl is about the wittiest and most sarcastic student I've ever had, so Lord only knows what nefarious schemes Machiavelli will inspire in her . . .

All Star

I bought these shoes today at Save Zone . . . pretty much the coolest shoes I've ever owned. I like them because they take something all-American and add Asian influences . . . reminds me of myself!

TWSS

You might think that the most difficult part of teaching in Korea is getting the kids to understand complex ideas in a second language. You'd be wrong. I find that the biggest challenge is not blurting out "That's what she said!" regularly in class.

For example, today the kids were listening to a lecture where the speaker was talking rather quickly. One girl blurted out, "So hard!" while another chipped in with "So fast!"

Yesterday was even better. A girl who was listening to the same lecture said, "I thought it was going to be short, but it was very long."

April Fooling 2010

Being that it's April 1st, I figured it was time to dust off the old April Fools Impossible Vocabulary Quiz. This year I got less of a reaction; I think it's because my introductory speech was less harrowing. It should be noted that one kid actually got 7/10, an improvement from last year's top score of 3/10.

However, I am also teaching a class where we are reading Bridge to Terabithia, and I created a new quiz for this class. Their usual quizzes ask them to identify the context and the significance of some passages from the book. I took this idea and ran with it. The first page was normal, but then I inserted this second page:



The disturbing thing is that nobody seemed to notice and they actually came up with some funny answers. The fact that the main character, Jess, talks like a country hick and not like Humphrey Bogart or Abraham Lincoln probably should have given it away.

School-Homed

I saw this stellar article on The Onion; frankly it could well have been printed in their Korean edition.

Increasing Number Of Parents Opting To Have Children School-Homed

This raises an interesting discussion. We're all aware of the stereotype that Asian students keep their nose to the grindstone for an inordinate amount of time. I recently saw an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer demanded extra homework for Bart and said "I want him to be Korean by the time he's done!" During the intensive class period, some of the kids spend more time with their English teachers than they do with their parents.

But why is this?

There are two answers that I've heard. The first is selfless; in a tiny country of nearly 50 million people, the competition for jobs is fierce, and every bit of extra education is a leg-up over future competitors. The second answer is selfish; in Confucian societies, the children are expected to take care of the parents, so when parents send their kids to school for 18 hours a day, they're actually looking out for themselves.

While I'm sure that in some cases this is true, I do not think it applies in all - or even in most - cases. Yes, there are some children who push themselves hard. But there are also average students, below-average students, and students who would spend 23 hours a day texting if they could. Some students still cheat, neglect homework, and/or fail tests. If parents were really concerned about their kids' futures, they'd whip everyone into shape. If they were purely motivated by future financial security, they'd do the same, or stop spending their wages on private education and invest that money.

It's hard to escape the idea that many parents are simply "school-homing" their kids because they don't want them hanging around. I've seen absolutely useless students attending extra morning classes, or even Saturday classes. I've asked the staff to inform parents that a kid is severely ADHD, only to be told that the parents don't care. A kid just walked into my classroom 40 minutes early, which wasn't allowed in my grade school.

Perhaps the American and Korean educational/babysitting systems aren't so different from each other after all.

Teaching: Machiavelli Style

Last week, our lesson centered around the Medici family of Renaissance Italy. Consequently we also spent some time discussing the great Niccolo Machiavelli and his book The Prince. I had a lot of fun with this lesson, as I studied The Prince in college and I also got to show the kids some of my pictures from Florence. The kids seemed to understand that Machiavelli's main philosophy was that a ruler must do whatever it takes to maintain power and ignore questions of right and wrong. However, they were confused by the assertion that "It may be answered that one should wish to be both [feared and loved], but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved." Luckily, I had a chance to demonstrate the principle.

A girl dropped her pencil and started to crawl under the desk to pick it up. I asked her to please wait, as I was in the middle of explaining a project. She continued anyway.

"You have detention," I said.

She stopped.

I then explained to the students that when I asked nicely, the girl didn't listen to me. But when I appealed to her fear of detention, she did what I wanted. Ergo, it is better to be feared than loved.

P.S., I didn't really give her detention.