I am posting below an email forwarded to me by The Stumbler. Many of these I've heard before, some are new to me, but here they are, all in the same place:
You think English is easy???
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ...
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on..
English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'
It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UPexcuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP . We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP ,you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP ... When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP !
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Ground Meeting
Even though the first day of school was March 2 and the first day of classes was March 3, today was the day of the all-school opening assembly, called the "ground meeting" since, well, everyone meets on the ground.
Everyone stands around for twenty minutes or so waiting, then they sing the national anthem, there is about ten minutes of ceremonies where top students are recognized and new faculty are introduced, then the alma mater is sung and we're done for another year.
In my photo, you can see where the gym is being built, right beside my classroom.
Everyone stands around for twenty minutes or so waiting, then they sing the national anthem, there is about ten minutes of ceremonies where top students are recognized and new faculty are introduced, then the alma mater is sung and we're done for another year.
In my photo, you can see where the gym is being built, right beside my classroom.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Suramu Danku, and Hyeongnim Status
... or Slam Dunk is the name of a Japanese manga comic series familiar to most Korean males under 30. It centers around the Shohoku high school basketball team, and particularly the exploits of a delinqent named Sakuragi who is rehabilitated as this team of misfits fights its way toward the national championship.
I mention this because I was informed by my new co-teacher Mr Kim (he of the case of the switched amplifier) that it is the source of my new nickname among the freshyear students. Study the team image above and see if you can figure out who the students think I resemble.
Tough choice, I know, but if you picked Mitsuyoshi Anzai, the team coach in the brown jacket, give yourself two points. At first, I wasn't sure I liked being nicknamed for a manga character, but after reading up a bit on the series, it's actually a compliment. Anzai is known as the "white-haired Buddha" because of his mild manner and strategic brilliance as a coach, and Sakuragi rubs his belly sometimes--I allowed a group of players at my old school to do the same thing, for luck.
This conversation took place at the first English Department meeting of the year, which began at a really upscale restaurant near Balsan named Tteokssamsidae, which means something like rice flour dumpling wrap times, and whose specialty involved wrapping the meat not in lettuce leaves but in thin sheets of ddeok. We moved to second round in Deungchon-dong where mass quantities were consumed before finishing up with third round in a noraebang.
At the conclusion of the evening Mr Right, who took over as Dept Chair, was quite moved, or drunk, or something, and told me that from now on he considers me his hyeongnim. This is a rare conferring of an honor on a foreigner, or at least that's the way I'm going to look at it. Anyway, it got the new school year off to a good start, as I gleaned that the four new teachers are rather "livelier" than last year's crop. Good.
Tough choice, I know, but if you picked Mitsuyoshi Anzai, the team coach in the brown jacket, give yourself two points. At first, I wasn't sure I liked being nicknamed for a manga character, but after reading up a bit on the series, it's actually a compliment. Anzai is known as the "white-haired Buddha" because of his mild manner and strategic brilliance as a coach, and Sakuragi rubs his belly sometimes--I allowed a group of players at my old school to do the same thing, for luck.
This conversation took place at the first English Department meeting of the year, which began at a really upscale restaurant near Balsan named Tteokssamsidae, which means something like rice flour dumpling wrap times, and whose specialty involved wrapping the meat not in lettuce leaves but in thin sheets of ddeok. We moved to second round in Deungchon-dong where mass quantities were consumed before finishing up with third round in a noraebang.
At the conclusion of the evening Mr Right, who took over as Dept Chair, was quite moved, or drunk, or something, and told me that from now on he considers me his hyeongnim. This is a rare conferring of an honor on a foreigner, or at least that's the way I'm going to look at it. Anyway, it got the new school year off to a good start, as I gleaned that the four new teachers are rather "livelier" than last year's crop. Good.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuttle Update
Well, week one of classes for the 2011 school year is finally over. Nineteen to go.
A few observations about the new crop of "freshyear" students: they seem on the whole a better prepared lot, in their English at least, though also freer, more talkative and less scared than previous groups; of 560 of them, 26 or maybe a few more are left-handed, a percentage which seems to be increasing every year; alas, nary an interesting pencilbox to be seen.
I have almost an entire new crop of co-teachers, only one returning from last year. One of the others has been at the school for a while, but never co-taught with me before. The rest are all new teachers. This is good and bad: good in that they have no baggage about what they should do and don't seem inclined to sit at the back and "take a rest" or read the newspaper; bad in that I cannot necessarily rely on them to keep me in the swing of what's going on at school--cancellations for standardized testing, meetings and such.
For the next month or so, my lessons will run from Thursday to Wednesday, so I have two new lessons tomorrow: first grade (remember that means 10th grade to USAns) will create our class rules; and second grade will learn about dating--Korean girls are more attracted to boys who can speak English, according to a survey. Part of this lesson is watching a video and answering questions about it.
Alas, my classroom sound system wasn't working on Monday (though it was fine on Friday afternoon), so the dude came to fix it this afternoon. During a class. And failed.
One of my new co-teachers, Mr Kim (who also works part-time for the tech desk, he told me), tried to switch out the amplifier with the one in the other, seldom-used, English classroom. But that didn't do the trick either. So my Plan B was just to hold 2nd grade classes in that room until the problem could be worked out, and Mr Kim returned the amplifier.
Now, that classroom has a much more complex sound system (though the identical amp running the PA) because it is essentially a listening lab, with student headsets and microphones wired up. Once he hooked everything up again, we now had two non-operational sound systems. Plan C, find some speakers and run them directly off my classroom computer. (Plan D would be make up a new lesson.)
While Mr Kim trotted off to find some ordinary computer-type speakers, I double-checked his work and found he had plugged the speaker cord in the microphone jack. Back to Plan B, I guess, and there's 45 minutes of my life I'll never see again.
Still, it's hard to fault a guy for trying to help, and I can say that he has great promise as a co-teacher, having in one week shown himself very quick to pick up on when to speak, when to move, how to interact with me as well as the students.
Also, did I mention the "touch" part of my big touch-screen is on the fritz?
A few observations about the new crop of "freshyear" students: they seem on the whole a better prepared lot, in their English at least, though also freer, more talkative and less scared than previous groups; of 560 of them, 26 or maybe a few more are left-handed, a percentage which seems to be increasing every year; alas, nary an interesting pencilbox to be seen.
I have almost an entire new crop of co-teachers, only one returning from last year. One of the others has been at the school for a while, but never co-taught with me before. The rest are all new teachers. This is good and bad: good in that they have no baggage about what they should do and don't seem inclined to sit at the back and "take a rest" or read the newspaper; bad in that I cannot necessarily rely on them to keep me in the swing of what's going on at school--cancellations for standardized testing, meetings and such.
For the next month or so, my lessons will run from Thursday to Wednesday, so I have two new lessons tomorrow: first grade (remember that means 10th grade to USAns) will create our class rules; and second grade will learn about dating--Korean girls are more attracted to boys who can speak English, according to a survey. Part of this lesson is watching a video and answering questions about it.
Alas, my classroom sound system wasn't working on Monday (though it was fine on Friday afternoon), so the dude came to fix it this afternoon. During a class. And failed.
One of my new co-teachers, Mr Kim (who also works part-time for the tech desk, he told me), tried to switch out the amplifier with the one in the other, seldom-used, English classroom. But that didn't do the trick either. So my Plan B was just to hold 2nd grade classes in that room until the problem could be worked out, and Mr Kim returned the amplifier.
Now, that classroom has a much more complex sound system (though the identical amp running the PA) because it is essentially a listening lab, with student headsets and microphones wired up. Once he hooked everything up again, we now had two non-operational sound systems. Plan C, find some speakers and run them directly off my classroom computer. (Plan D would be make up a new lesson.)
While Mr Kim trotted off to find some ordinary computer-type speakers, I double-checked his work and found he had plugged the speaker cord in the microphone jack. Back to Plan B, I guess, and there's 45 minutes of my life I'll never see again.
Still, it's hard to fault a guy for trying to help, and I can say that he has great promise as a co-teacher, having in one week shown himself very quick to pick up on when to speak, when to move, how to interact with me as well as the students.
Also, did I mention the "touch" part of my big touch-screen is on the fritz?
Thursday, March 3, 2011
First Day of Classes
First day of classes under the belt, so to speak, and all's ... well, much the same. Which isn't bad.
My schedule consists of 20 class hours, 14 HS first graders (i.e. sophomores) and 6 "second graders, known in the US as juniors. The typical class (if today was any indication) will have 40 students who are not placed according to English proficiency, and a co-teacher I've never met before.
Well, that last isn't entirely true, as co-teacher par excellence Mr Wright was one. Two of the others were brand new to the school, and made a point to come by and ask me what I expected of them. Off to a good start with the scary waygookin!
As I have done for three years now, the first class with me begins with a quote on the board, to copy into their notebooks:
When we get down to what that means, all about symbolic representation and language, etc., I draw other configurations of three sticks on the board. Most are meaningless but I put in the Korean character ㅋ which is the k sound, and an H.
That segues into speaking English in this class, entering the "English Only Zone" and not worrying about grammar and accuracy. "It's okay to make a mistake," and so on.
Then I draw on my Multiple Intelligences background of Howard Gardner et al (look it up, it's definitely worth your time as a teacher) by doing some math. "How many minutes in an hour?" I ask, and put the response up. "How many hours in a day? How many days in a week?"
"So, how many minutes are in a week?" --10,080.
"How many minutes are you in this classroom?" --50.
"You can speak Korean out there"--sweeping gesture out the window--"for 10,030 minutes every week. I only ask you to try to speak English FIFTY little, teeny minutes when you're in this classroom." (Granted, I leave out the fact that this means I am likely to have little to no impact on their ability to speak English ...)
Anyway, I've just had the idea that I'm going to put great big block numerals of 10 030 up in key locations of the classroom next week.
So, Part III of Lesson One: Introductions. I provide a little biography of myself and my background, concluding with three (cherished) similes about myself: My friends say that I am as smart as Einstein, as funny as Jim Carrey and as kind as Mother Teresa."
Believe it or not, only thirty minute or so have elapsed by the point the students get to this, their first speaking assignment. They have to write three sentences about themselves in the format: "I am as (adjective) as/as a (famous person or animal)." Before the end of class, everyone will have to read one or more of their sentences. ("I've told you about myself, now you will tell me about yourself.")
Before they begin, we list on the board some adjectives that describe people's bodies, circumstances and personalities, then match them with famous people or animals, etc. As rich as Bill Gates, as strong as Hercules, as tall as a tree.
By now (I just calculated this: I have done this lesson almost exactly this way 52 times here at Youngil-go) I get a little feel for the class based on their best adjective/noun pairings. In the past, some of my favorites have been as silent as space, as kind as the KFC grandfather (aka Col. Sanders), as passionate as fire, as delicious as Britney Spears.
It's interesting sometimes, the different impressions people form: students have been as lazy as a dog, and as energetic as a dog, as outgoing as one, or as happy as a puppy. Today a student was a modest as a pastor. But the winner was as noble as a unicorn. I'm not sure what that means, but I like it.
My schedule consists of 20 class hours, 14 HS first graders (i.e. sophomores) and 6 "second graders, known in the US as juniors. The typical class (if today was any indication) will have 40 students who are not placed according to English proficiency, and a co-teacher I've never met before.
Well, that last isn't entirely true, as co-teacher par excellence Mr Wright was one. Two of the others were brand new to the school, and made a point to come by and ask me what I expected of them. Off to a good start with the scary waygookin!
As I have done for three years now, the first class with me begins with a quote on the board, to copy into their notebooks:
To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. --A.A. Milne
When we get down to what that means, all about symbolic representation and language, etc., I draw other configurations of three sticks on the board. Most are meaningless but I put in the Korean character ㅋ which is the k sound, and an H.
That segues into speaking English in this class, entering the "English Only Zone" and not worrying about grammar and accuracy. "It's okay to make a mistake," and so on.
Then I draw on my Multiple Intelligences background of Howard Gardner et al (look it up, it's definitely worth your time as a teacher) by doing some math. "How many minutes in an hour?" I ask, and put the response up. "How many hours in a day? How many days in a week?"
"So, how many minutes are in a week?" --10,080.
"How many minutes are you in this classroom?" --50.
"You can speak Korean out there"--sweeping gesture out the window--"for 10,030 minutes every week. I only ask you to try to speak English FIFTY little, teeny minutes when you're in this classroom." (Granted, I leave out the fact that this means I am likely to have little to no impact on their ability to speak English ...)
Anyway, I've just had the idea that I'm going to put great big block numerals of 10 030 up in key locations of the classroom next week.
So, Part III of Lesson One: Introductions. I provide a little biography of myself and my background, concluding with three (cherished) similes about myself: My friends say that I am as smart as Einstein, as funny as Jim Carrey and as kind as Mother Teresa."
Believe it or not, only thirty minute or so have elapsed by the point the students get to this, their first speaking assignment. They have to write three sentences about themselves in the format: "I am as (adjective) as/as a (famous person or animal)." Before the end of class, everyone will have to read one or more of their sentences. ("I've told you about myself, now you will tell me about yourself.")
Before they begin, we list on the board some adjectives that describe people's bodies, circumstances and personalities, then match them with famous people or animals, etc. As rich as Bill Gates, as strong as Hercules, as tall as a tree.
By now (I just calculated this: I have done this lesson almost exactly this way 52 times here at Youngil-go) I get a little feel for the class based on their best adjective/noun pairings. In the past, some of my favorites have been as silent as space, as kind as the KFC grandfather (aka Col. Sanders), as passionate as fire, as delicious as Britney Spears.
It's interesting sometimes, the different impressions people form: students have been as lazy as a dog, and as energetic as a dog, as outgoing as one, or as happy as a puppy. Today a student was a modest as a pastor. But the winner was as noble as a unicorn. I'm not sure what that means, but I like it.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
A New School Year
Back in the US, the new school year traditionally begins the day after Labor Day, which is the first Monday in September. They still do that in some places, but in much of the country, the school year starts earlier and earlier, nibbling away at the "three best reasons to teach" (June, july and August) until there's only two and a quarter.
Korea has a similar scheme, with the school year beginning on March 2, the day after the Sam-il (3-1) Independence Movement holiday, commemorating 1919 demonstrations against the repressive Japanese occupation of Korea.
So, tomorrow begins my third full year teaching Conversational English, although actually, the day consists of (if it follows form) a couple of faculty meetings and an all-school assembly in the hall on the fifth floor of my building, where sometimes students dribble basketballs during inclement weather.
This is to be Principal Jun's last semester, and I understand everyone is waiting to find out who his replacement will be, although I don't expect that will be announced tomorrow. I can say I have appreciated his support and regard.
I went in today to get my classroom ready, mainly cleaning two months of Seoul city grime off all the horizontal surfaces, trimming and placing my plants and fixing up the bulletin board. I also got a couple of weeks worth of lesson plans squared away, though that's iffy due to the fact there has been talk about streaming the classes--if they've actually done it, I'll have modifications to make. I'll make them gladly.
Yes, it creates more work for me, but if they won't give me smaller classes or more face time, organizing classes by English level is probably the most effective change they could make. The other thing the new Department Head hoped to work out for me was a team planning period with my co-teachers, weekly or twice a month. This would be great, as I expect I'll have a slate of newbies, given the way they rotate this duty--turns out, it's not seen as a chore by most, but as a plum. Not because of me so much as because it counts as a regular class assignment.
So, here we go again--off into another year with new challenges, new faces, new minds. The best time of year is the first day of school--when we all get create ourselves anew!
Korea has a similar scheme, with the school year beginning on March 2, the day after the Sam-il (3-1) Independence Movement holiday, commemorating 1919 demonstrations against the repressive Japanese occupation of Korea.
So, tomorrow begins my third full year teaching Conversational English, although actually, the day consists of (if it follows form) a couple of faculty meetings and an all-school assembly in the hall on the fifth floor of my building, where sometimes students dribble basketballs during inclement weather.
This is to be Principal Jun's last semester, and I understand everyone is waiting to find out who his replacement will be, although I don't expect that will be announced tomorrow. I can say I have appreciated his support and regard.
I went in today to get my classroom ready, mainly cleaning two months of Seoul city grime off all the horizontal surfaces, trimming and placing my plants and fixing up the bulletin board. I also got a couple of weeks worth of lesson plans squared away, though that's iffy due to the fact there has been talk about streaming the classes--if they've actually done it, I'll have modifications to make. I'll make them gladly.
Yes, it creates more work for me, but if they won't give me smaller classes or more face time, organizing classes by English level is probably the most effective change they could make. The other thing the new Department Head hoped to work out for me was a team planning period with my co-teachers, weekly or twice a month. This would be great, as I expect I'll have a slate of newbies, given the way they rotate this duty--turns out, it's not seen as a chore by most, but as a plum. Not because of me so much as because it counts as a regular class assignment.
So, here we go again--off into another year with new challenges, new faces, new minds. The best time of year is the first day of school--when we all get create ourselves anew!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Education News Roundup
I have been out of the loop, but the new school year is just a few days away, so here's the latest goings-on in the Korean education world:
1) Corporal punishment was banned in Gyeonggi-do schools last October, and the ban has since grown to include Seoul and many other school districts. Frankly, the Korean system has relied almost entirely on the threat of physical pain to keep students in line for so long that no one seems to have thought about any alternative disciplinary modi.
Fortunately, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has come to the rescue, releasing new discipline guidelines, according to the JoongAng Daily:
Mind you, I am quite blessed in this area, since my classes really experience very little in the way of disruption--the biggest problem I have is quite the opposite: sleeping students, who are only disruptive if they snore loudly. And, furthermore, my co-teachers, even if they can do little else, can at least go round making sure everyone stays awake. Getting them enthused about the class activities--that's my job.
2) Under the headline "They may be old, but ‘school sheriffs’ good to go," JoongAng reports on a Seoul city government response to an increase in crime near city schools:
4) Read the whole story here to get all the ins and outs, but the daughter of a Korean English teacher in a Seoul high school is accused of stealing the English exams and using them in tutoring students prepping for the exams. Complicating the story is that the school was identified in 2009 (and given lots of government money) for being a school "without private education". But the most interesting feature of the story to me is this quote:
Hmmm. See, I think it's practically impossible to provide such tutoring without developing the student's creativity.
5) The DongA Ilbo gives us a statistics-laden report on the drop in the number of Korean students studying overseas. The decline was quite significant, with 33.7% fewer overseas students year-on-year.
6) Finally, for a bit of comic relief, we turn to the Herald, which steals a story from the Straits Times (Singapore) about a Korean secondary school whose website was allegedly hacked and replaced by a pornographic website. Turns out, though, that Junyuan Secondary School had teminated its old URL at www.junyuansec.net while building a new net presence.
As a school webmaster, I've actually seen both ends of this, first when the McEachern HS website actually was hacked and its homepage replaced by a pr0n image; secondly, my school failed to pay its yearly bill to our provider, and someone moved in under us and bought the address. Fortunately, this guy only put up clothes merchandising, and I was able to hunt him down (somewhere in South Africa) and buy it back.
1) Corporal punishment was banned in Gyeonggi-do schools last October, and the ban has since grown to include Seoul and many other school districts. Frankly, the Korean system has relied almost entirely on the threat of physical pain to keep students in line for so long that no one seems to have thought about any alternative disciplinary modi.
Fortunately, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has come to the rescue, releasing new discipline guidelines, according to the JoongAng Daily:
Under the guidelines, teachers are permitted to discipline students by ordering them to do push-ups, stand in the back of the classroom, or run or walk a few laps around the school playground. Teachers will be permitted to suspend students from school for up to ten days, with a maximum suspension of 30 days a year. Suspended students will receive counseling from education experts. If a student keeps misbehaving after 30 days of suspension, the ministry will allow teachers to summon parents to school for counseling. [...]The problem is that even suspension is an ineffective tool, since students are never ever held back to repeat a school year. In Korea's Confucian confusion, group harmony is so important that disruptive students who ruin the educational exerience for their cohort must be allowed to continue doing so. Until this changes, nothing else will.
The ordinance that banned corporal punishment said teachers could summon parents of a misbehaving student, but teachers complained it wasn’t legally binding and chances were high that parents wouldn’t obey.
The ministry plans to revise a law to mandate parents to appear at schools when teachers summon them to discuss their children’s misbehavior.
Mind you, I am quite blessed in this area, since my classes really experience very little in the way of disruption--the biggest problem I have is quite the opposite: sleeping students, who are only disruptive if they snore loudly. And, furthermore, my co-teachers, even if they can do little else, can at least go round making sure everyone stays awake. Getting them enthused about the class activities--that's my job.
2) Under the headline "They may be old, but ‘school sheriffs’ good to go," JoongAng reports on a Seoul city government response to an increase in crime near city schools:
Three months ago, the city announced plans to improve children’s safety by hiring a team of these “sheriffs.” A total of 1,094 people were selected and survived four levels of fastidious evaluations. They will be deployed to 547 schools in early March.Now, of course, they're "good to go" or "ready to roll", according to the article. Their average age is 59.
These “sheriffs” learned similar tactics to what police learn.
Choi Young-hee, 67, one of the few female attendees, is a former police officer with 30 years of experience. She recalls an incident in 1980, when seven male students raped two middle school girls behind the school.3) Unfortunately, that kind of thing hasn't stopped since 1980, as a Korea Times story illustrates: four teenagers lured a middle school girl to a nearby school playground (in Busan's Nambu district) and forced her to drink alcohol. "After molesting the girl, they abandoned her in the 6.8 centimeter deep snow that had fallen in Busan that day, and fled." Police arrested two students for rape and booked two others without physical detention, the story notes. It doesn't say why, but presumably there's a better reason than that they weren't foreign English teachers.
“All the assailants were arrested but the shock still remains today,” said Choi.
4) Read the whole story here to get all the ins and outs, but the daughter of a Korean English teacher in a Seoul high school is accused of stealing the English exams and using them in tutoring students prepping for the exams. Complicating the story is that the school was identified in 2009 (and given lots of government money) for being a school "without private education". But the most interesting feature of the story to me is this quote:
Urging an investigation, one teacher said, “Since we made many questions meant to develop creativity as encouraged by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, it is practically impossible to provide such tutoring without stealing questions.”
Hmmm. See, I think it's practically impossible to provide such tutoring without developing the student's creativity.
5) The DongA Ilbo gives us a statistics-laden report on the drop in the number of Korean students studying overseas. The decline was quite significant, with 33.7% fewer overseas students year-on-year.
The number of primary and secondary school students going abroad started to surge from 2000 and peaked at 29,511 in 2006. The figure, however, decreased to 27,668 in 2007 and has since declined for three consecutive years.
6) Finally, for a bit of comic relief, we turn to the Herald, which steals a story from the Straits Times (Singapore) about a Korean secondary school whose website was allegedly hacked and replaced by a pornographic website. Turns out, though, that Junyuan Secondary School had teminated its old URL at www.junyuansec.net while building a new net presence.
As a school webmaster, I've actually seen both ends of this, first when the McEachern HS website actually was hacked and its homepage replaced by a pr0n image; secondly, my school failed to pay its yearly bill to our provider, and someone moved in under us and bought the address. Fortunately, this guy only put up clothes merchandising, and I was able to hunt him down (somewhere in South Africa) and buy it back.
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