What Teaching? Teaching What?

DPP (D. Pucaaiaiaiai! Pilipina) asks about education.

Just like in the US, not so very much.

But since I nearly ran off with DPP to smuggle guano to the Solomon Islands (Alas, a handsome Anglo named Bruce Geer stole her away with his manly and direct glance. These things happen. It turned out for the best as I have the OAF and DPP now lives in her cluttered office amongst half-eaten candies, dog-eared books, and two book-eared dogs.) I thought I might start on about that.

Since I’m always going on about something.

The commitment to “learning” English is stated but not real.

While I teach a “conversational” class, the final the students take to assess their ‘conversational’ skills will be 100% written. A deaf mute could pass these tests.

I was talking to my coordinator about the fact that they have given us a textbook which presents us with 7 “exercises” to do in 90 minutes. In 75 minutes, actually, since a 15 minute break is given. So assume 5 minutes for taking roll, announcements, getting the chairs shifted, and so forth, we have 10 minutes per exercise to include explanation of the task, modeling (most of the books are big on modeling), and then the actual exercise.

This is unattainable in even the most frenetic forced lockstep. So, you assign some as homework and hope it gets done. When I had this conversation with my director he shrugged (this is his response, similar to the program director’s sigh and faraway unfocused stare) and said, “it happens every term. They assign us a certain amount of chapters and by the midterm we are far behind.” But the next semester they give us the same number of chapters. Since most of the courses are curved I suppose that none of this matters, 10-20% will get A’s and the rest will follow below. I’m not teaching at a prestigious university. But no one is learning conversational English here.

I have noted the number of Koreans one can see, in Seoul, on the underground reading a book in English. And not just any book, frequently books of some heft, both physically and in the canon. I’ve seen Dickens, Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, you name it. But any attempt to speak with these readers would be futile. They can’t speak more than a few words of English, and certainly couldn’t construct a spoken sentence under any circumstances. The Korean educational approach to instruction is one of the many reasons this is so.

Most Koreans don’t see this as a problem. Korean men in the United States are sometimes referred to as “hi-bye” men because of their lack of fluency. Kim Seong-kon, writing in the Korea Herald notes that the problem really is that the goal of Korean education is to pass tests. Kim refers students to US institutions and says that the institutions are always amazed at the high TOEFL and GRE scores of Korean applicants. He says, “Indeed, who could be better-trained than Korean students when it comes to choosing the right answer on an exam sheet? Due to the notorious college entrance exam that decides one’s future, Korean students begin training to choose the right answer as early as elementary school. Kim goes on to note that the second “amazement” these institutions get is when the Korean students arrive in the US and are not able to speak English.” Kim says that he has to walk these people through an understanding that test-taking and speaking ability are essentially uncoupled in Korea. While in the United States tests are supposed to measure, and even increase, knowledge, in Korea the tests are supposed to measure, well, test-taking ability.

And so it is that, somewhere in there, the little kids on the street who can speak limited, but pretty accentless English, become the college Freshmen who are entirely unfamiliar with English. 12 years of education has done its job and rendered these students entirely mute.

Society is pleased.

And I get paid, so it’s ALL good.