easing into winter

winter, we meet again.

well, i guess it's still fall, but we're well past the riot of pretty autumn leaves, now sluffed off and rotting in the gutters. it's all skeletal branches, morning frost and wool mitts from here. my school doesn't have central electric heating like we have in Canada. instead, they have these tall square metal stoves that stand in the middle of each room, attached to long silver stovepipes that pump the smoke out the window. they don't heat the halls, or bathroom, just select rooms, so walking around the building is a menopausal experience, from freezing to suddenly overbearingly hot. i'm not sure what fuel they use... perhaps the rounded grey (charcoal?) blocks they use in bbq pork restaurants, or some sort of liquid. it's deadly hot to touch, as i learned last year, to the great amusement of my students. the students wrap sweet potatoes in tin foil, and cook them on the round top of the stove during class. the ashy warm smell of these stoves hit me today walking into school, and i swooned with the variety of nostalgia that only smells can bring. i arrived here last year in the flush of winter, mid December, so the distinctive smells of stove, tinfoil and sweet potatoes brings me back to those early days. in many ways i feel like a completely different person. this year has been an instructive one. i feel years older. in good ways (more maturity, responsibility, caution) and bad ones too (being unable to stay awake past 9, weird scraping feelings in the knees when I run, the odd white hairs). for me this is a quiet time of repose. i have fewer classes because of exams, no more lessons to make for the year, most of the friends i had here have left korea, I have tons of unread books, and vacation time to look forward to.

But, for my students, this time is especially difficult. Weeping girls everywhere. I don't want to return too much to the education problems i mentioned in the previous post. Basically, exam stress for Korean kids is so much worse here than at home, for no good reason either, since they are outdated, and don't really test real abilities or skills. Personally, I think they are criminal, especially the SATs. The main reason these tests exist is not for the personal knowledge or education of the students, but to line the coffers of universities, which should be, in my opinion, considered corporations like any other business that brands themselves and reaps huge profits. Korea is dominated by 3 "top" universities and the market is saturated with both national and private universities. Yet these institutes don't necessarily equip them with jobs or steady futures after the diplomas are dolled out and the tuitions are paid. Like Canada, the myth of post-secondary education as necessity leaves many Korean students in debt, overqualified yet unemployed and stymied as to what to do with their futures.

But, to these kids it can be a matter of life and death if they don't get the right scores, or the school with the best reputation. And it is about reputation, and again, image, and just a total fear of shaming your parents, in spite of whatever your personal desires may be.
http://www.koreasparkle.com/2008/11/a-prayer-for-korean-high-school-students/#content

I spent yesterday consoling a 3rd grade girl (17 years old) who is convinced that because she didn't ace the SATs, and because she didn't pass an interview needed to enter the education department of Busan University, her life is basically over. She says she is a failure. Her teachers, and parents have put these ideas into her head, this week she has constantly been yelled at, lectured and scornfully regarded as lazy. She is a bright, sweet, kind, sensitive girl who would make a great teacher. In her own time she has come to see me at lunch to talk, improve her English and also, I suspect, to unload her troubled thoughts, and emotional burdens. 17 years old, she thinks it's all over, and her life has barely even begun.

I tried to tell her that the problem is not her ability or effort, but the education system which has failed to give her teachers, text books, classes and tests that will give her the abilities she needs for these interviews. From her descriptions of the interviews she had this week at various universities, the post secondary system is just as backwards as the the high school system. For the Education department in Bussan, they gave her a ridiculously difficult article about sustainable development filled with vocabulary she has never seen and asked her to discuss the issue, in English. Yet the interview for the English literature department in Gangwon University was conducted entirely in Korean and required no English from her at all.

This girl didn't stand a chance of passing the first interview. They don't teach any speaking or higher level critical thinking at our public highschool. Only the kids whose parents can afford to send them to expensive afterschool Academies and study with native speakers have these conversational skills. Such an elitist system.

I'll see her again today, I hope she's feeling a bit better. She seemed a bit happier after our talk. Maybe just the chance to vent against her parents and teachers, without being hit with a stick for it; In fact I encouraged her not to be sad, but to be angry at this shitty system, and at her parents for being such unfair assholes. God, I am so going to get in some trouble if i stay here in longer.


Anyways, here is a hymn for winter that i've been playing on repeat on my NEW IPOD TOUCH!