Reminds me something…
Foreword / Politeness
Please, when in the classroom
- do not wear a cap, a hat or anything on your head,
- do not eat or drink,
- do not chew gum,
- switch your mobile phone off.
When I taught in a Korean University, I enforced the same basic rules. But I wasn’t as nice… It is telling that [young] adults have to be told to follow basic politeness rules.
April 16th, 2006 at 7:01 am
I was told by Korean professors that, around ten years ago, the implicit rules of politeness in the classroom were implicitly relaxed. But I have my doubts about this, since I heard in other occasions, from Korean professors, the argument: “Ten years ago…” It is not like the Western: “In my days “, or “When I was young.” It’s not the Golden Ages symptome (not syndrome
because these professors do not consider the current situation a problem at all. But that the “Ten years ago” sounds to me like the exact equivalent to the Western “Three decades ago…” Yeah, Korean calendar is different, as you once explained in this blog:-)
April 16th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Koreans usually don’t like strangers – people outside their group, be it foreigners, people not employed in their company, people outside their family – to be involved in their dirty laundry. It’s the same everywhere, but of course within Korean society it’s a little more intense.
Before I left Korea, I had been accepted in one group by most of its members as one of them, and they could relax enough to speak their minds as if I wasn’t there – or as if I would react as one of them. But it takes a lot of time, not only to be accepted, but also to have the background to match: those who knew me knew they could say things like You know, 15 years ago, as you may remember, people were much more innocent and obedient. (This particular sentence was in reference to the fact that until the late 80s early 90s, embezzling was easier. Don’t ask…).
Besides, in private universities, you can’t go about and displease too many students at once. They are clients and should be treated as such – at least that’s what most Uni admins and parents seem to think. In the Uni that employed me for two years, we had instructions on which marks to give and how many of each. F’s were frown upon, too many A’s [grant money could run out too fast
] and too many D’s were not encouraged. Similar to the Korean society, they encouraged a large middle class [lots of B’s and C’s, few elites and tramps, please]. Keep them content, but in awe of precious few, don’t make too many outcasts. Needless to say, I never paid attention to these instructions. Likewise, we had instructions to pass all students taking the graduation exam, however bad it was. I tried to fail a particularly bad copy, to learn later that “someone” [I have a good idea who it was] took a pen and changed F to something else…
I had few classes with more than 15 students. So it was easy to control them. But not to make them work and learn, as they *knew* that all they had to do is endure that crap for 8 semesters, maybe 9 if they ran into crap with one prof, like me, and they would graduate. I hope the situation is better in science departments, but somehow I am not too hopeful…
April 17th, 2006 at 9:52 am
The situation you describe is exactly the same in my university. So exactly that it is scary. I indeed need to “adjust” my grades next year, because I may lose my job otherwise. Already one of my classes got canceled, due to the lack of students… The difficulty is that it’s English class + computer science class. That is the paradox: the Korean government (at least since 2001) promotes teaching the undergrads in English, the universities have to follow the trend if they want the public funds to flow in (especially private universities like mine), but… students do not want such classes. Well, well, well….
Being a foreigner, and not a permament faculty member, cuts me off the “rumour”, which is the basic means of information for absolutely everything. On the other hand, I am not expected to get drunk with my colleagues and I don’t fear the rumour: I “just” accept the idea that everybody knows everything about me at work. The worse is that I think that my unability to speak Korean has no impact… So it’s deadlocked but I like my situation here: a lot of freedom, a decent salary and better relationship with the students (if any:-)). Much better conditions than in France. I came back to Korea for this kind of job. In France, since a few years now, shareholders are too busy earning money without working instead of decently paying the workers.