In OhMyNews, Michael Solis, a visiting researcher and intern at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, writes about discrimination in the English teaching industry. (HT to reader)
-
English Books on Korea... and More!
Discrimination and Teaching English
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on January 9, 2008 at 1:07 pm, filed under Asides, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
22 Comments
Thanks you.
“Criminal background checks, medical examinations, and interviews with consular officials prior to residing in Korea are all sifting mechanisms that can potentially make it easier to deny entry to, and thus tacitly discriminate against, minorities, underrepresented and “unfit” people.”
Very interesting way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought about it, but the interview process is most certainly opening the door to additional discrimination against gays, visible minorities, people who speak with a certain accent, etc.
I’m sure the whole “if you don’t like it go back to your country thing” will be uttered forth from the locals mouths here.
What can one do besides never come here to begin with or leave Korea and never come back.
I think both things will occur and I say good on them.
based on sheer length alone, i didn’t even begin reading beyond the skillful intro (it really is good actually). i don’t do the “go home” argument. but do we really need another one of these articles? it’s all been done. dave’s eslcafe has milked it to an utter death. my gut reaction is “who gives a flying flip anymore!” get over yourselves you whities. get in there and start paddling upstream. the cheese has moved, and if you want it, there are new places you will have to start looking. China for one.
“A sad truth is that these tales are returning to the home countries of foreign teachers by plane, boat, and e-mail, which is having a tarnishing effect on the ONCE REPUTABLE IMAGE OF ENGLISH EDUCATION IN KOREA.”
I had to go get some coffee and read that again just so I could spit it out while laughing.
I’m only half white, but the “whitey” half will get over itself if the locals get over themselves.
Yep, ZenKimchi in #4, i had the same reaction as you to that stupid naive line. I can testify that the image of English education in Korea has NEVER been reputable… Gather ’round, children, and i’ll tell ya scary tales of the early 80s…
The final sentence in the second to last paragraph. Let’s read that again shall we?
“Then don’t hiring and visa granting practices that favor Caucasians over other races and ethnicities, those without disabilities over those with disabilities, homosexuals over heterosexuals, the underweight over the overweight, etc. contradict everything that this first, fundamental principle of human rights hopes to achieve?”
Let’s look a little closer:
“Then don’t hiring and visa granting practices that favor…homosexuals over heterosexuals….”
Didn’t see that in the new visa laws.
#2, It didn’t take long. Look at number #3.
“get over yourselves you whities.”
Yeah, that’s it. Add weight to your argument by using racial epithets.
#6,
It’s not a naive line. It’s a device used by the writer to form an appeal to reason. Remember what reader this was written for, he couldn’t write, “English education has been a mess from the get go, but this is just pathetic”.
Besides, he is right to contend that English education used to be quite effective in Korea. It most certainly was…in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (before Japan tried to limit the western influence in Korea by handing over the missionary schools to Japanese owners, who promptly dropped the Direct Method used by Western missionaries and switched to the Grammar Translation Method because of their own limited fluency in English).
#5,
Yeah, just shows how close minded that guy is. As if we’re all white. I don’t consider myself all white, either. You’d understand if you saw me.
“get over yourselves, whitey.” Read it again. Really, read it again.
Dear Dingus, this was written by a guy who’s interning at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. He’s advocating for almost everyone except whitey. Oh, he is saying that men are kinda getting shafted but, hey, if you like you can gloss over that part. It is, after all, one sentence of a very long piece. You can even pretend he’s not just talking about white men which is what I was assuming.
Dude, you just projected your own prejudice into an article where it was completely absent. Nice going Dingus.
Oh, sorry! Dinkus, my bad.
I dunno though. I’m imagining how I would feel if every few days in USA Today there were letters from foreign residents complaining about the US, its hiring practices, the rudeness, etc. I think I’d be tempted to say “Don’t like it? Get out” as well.
It does and you did.
@9 did we just blame Japan for another of Korea’s issues? …their ineffective English education system?
#15, No, I wouldn’t say that because the educational system should have been reformed after the Korean War. Problem is, those who had the knowledge to steer the Korean educational system into the right direction, namely Koreans who were educated in the US before their return to Korea, were more interested in securing high-ranking positions with companies and those who got into education were more concerned with protecting their position in the ivory towers of academia (the fact they secured these positions probably helped fuel Korean interest in English). So, instead of having an overhaul of the Korean educational system, the Korean government simply continued using textbooks that the publishers had simply copied from the old Japanese textbooks. Same goes for Korean-English dictionaries.
I’ve often heard my students (again always adults) blame the Japanese for the state the Korean education system.
I ususally say, “It’s been over 50 years since the US kicked Japan out, why haven’t you changed it?”
They usually say, -insert crickets chirping and dogs barking in the distance-
Once a person had an answer which was, “it isn’t that easy!”
That cleared things up for me.
Gads, the author of that article needs to wake up and smell the coffee. All of the forms of discrimination he is accusing Korea of are alive and well in U.S. public schools as well…. Being from the U.S. myself, I would liek to see a bit more of our own housekeeping done before we drop the all-powerful hammer on someone else….
“like” that is….
I can’t clear it up either for you, Breaktrack, but I can offer a clue, as a quote: Every inefficiency has its patron.
That is, any time you see some operation consuming 100 dollars that you know should cost 50, someone is benefitting from the inefficiency, and will work to oppose what everyone else would call an improvement.
From a cost/benefit perspective, Korea’s education system, both public and private, is a national disaster. But someone must be benefitting…
Simple solution:
Finish contract, leave country, encourage others not to come here.
Yes, the “whitey” comment was off base. It was supposed to be. I am also white. And no I didn’t read the entire article. It was too long. It was just yet another long winded complaint about Korea. I’m just sick of the complaining. I quit doing it a long time ago. The world is what it is. It’s not unique to Korea. Deal with it.