Day with Dad

On the Saturday before Western Father's Day, the kindergarteners brought their dad to our school. The day was hardly a normal learning experience, so I guess the event was only in part to show that their children knew a little English, and was more about having the fathers meet the teachers and having them actually spend some quality time with their children, which is a rarity in a country where it is common practice for the man of a family to live and work apart from the others and only see them on weekends. Anyway, we mostly just had fun. Each of the classes rotated from room to room, and at each station there was an activity, such as twister, snack making, or throwing balls and having the partner catch it in a basket. I was in the face painting room, where the kids drew on their dads' faces, which was generally hilarious and was an obvious time to bring a camera, which I of course neglected to do. Thankfully Will was kind enough to let me use his pictures. It was fun to see the resemblance between the fathers and their offspring, but by far the best part of the day was to watch the dads in the hallway on their cellphones looking very serious and business-like except for the ridiculous things drawn on their faces. Madeline's dad was by far the most amusing looking. I don't know where she got the inspiration, but the results speak for themselves (I'm pretty sure you can figure out which one he is).

Awwwkward...

This last week I have experienced far more sexuality than I ever ever wanted to as a teacher. First and foremost, one of my older (but still pre-middle school and barely pubescent) students drew some rather inappropriate pictures in her homework book. The most striking one was of a girl in her underwear, blindfolded, and tied to a cross. This makes the student's earlier attempts to sit really close to me and to hold my hand as we walk down the hall even more awkward than they already were, especially since the drawings were somewhere I would inevitably see them rather than it just being some accident that I saw her sketches. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since I was thoroughly preoccupied by the idea of sex by the time I was in the third grade, which is a fact that I try not to remember now that I teach so many third graders. I feel certain that I hadn't so much as heard of bondage until much later, but I suppose it is natural that they have since this next generation has had access to the internet their whole lives.

Today there were a couple of lesser incidents. Every kindergarten class has a daily English expression that they need to have memorized by the time they leave in the afternoon. These expressions range from the highly useful ("May I go to the bathroom please") to the moderately amusing ("What is that ridiculous thing on your head?") to the uber depressing ("Heneh Teacher is sad and just wants to be left alone") to the utter useless and bizarre ("The giraffe and the monster became friends and never fought again"[ok, I made this one up, but it really is astoundingly close to real ones that I can't recall word for word right now]), the latter of which I think are from the stories they read in other classes. Anyway, today's daily expression in one class was "Take my hand while you get off", which (I found out after talking to the teacher who chose it) is a rule for disembarking from the school bus, and is actually a phrase handed down from our head office. However, when I first entered the classroom and saw it written in the corner of the whiteboard I busted out laughing and had to fight down the laughter for another couple minutes of the class every time I looked at it. The kids thankfully had no idea what was so funny. Also, I'm glad that at least one of my co-workers has a mind as dirty as mine and also laughed right away, since another one only got it when I mentioned that it was inappropriate and another didn't see what was wrong with it at all.

Finally, in one of my afternoon classes with very small children today a child asked to go to the bathroom, and I said no (the school's policy is that they are only allowed to get water or go to the bathroom during the five minute breaks that they get every 40 minutes because otherwise half the class would go every class period). Upon my refusal Dragon (I don't know how he managed to get the teachers to allow him to change his English name from Frank, and while the teacher in me is mildly annoyed the rest of me thinks it's awesome) proceeded to whip it out, presumably to emphasize his need. Ok, really there was nothing sexual about this incident, but I really would rather not see the genitals of any of my students in any context.

As I said, awkward.

Potential

Before I decided to come to Korea, I spent a long time deeply depressed due to my attempts to figure out what I was doing with my life. I was terrified of setting myself on a career path, and wanted to opt out of the whole system, and I think I'm beginning to be able to put into words why.
All the jobs I've ever wanted don't exist. As a child I was sure that starship commander, ambassador to an alien race, or robotics engineer would be available to me as career options. I've always known that I was more intelligent than those around me, and because of this I thought I had world-altering brilliance instead of recognizing the reality that I was very bright in a dull town and school system. My family and teachers always gushed over my potential. They seemed so confident that I would do something important and amazing, and they encouraged me with the oft told lie that I could be anything I wanted when I grew up with the result that I don't want any jobs that actually exist because they all fall lightyears short of my expectations. Now the times I spend sleeping in gutters are the highlights of my life. I have worked about a dozen shitty short term jobs to avoid having to face the fact that I will never explore the far reaches of the galaxy, or even live on the moon.

Another part of my dissatisfaction with careers is that I think that the current conception of jobs is growing ever more anachronistic. As far back as I can remember I have worked under the assumption that advances in technology and increases in population would make work unnecessary for most people. I think this is why I am so open to socialism: I think that in the near future there will be far less work that needs to be done than what would be sufficient to occupy people, and I don't like the idea of just inventing useless busywork to fill the ever growing gap. I have recently come to realize how unusual that assumption is, especially when talking to people a generation or two older than me. I have a tutor student who is the parent of one of the children at my school, and she was telling me about what a big problem old age was in Korea. People have been saving on the assumption of a shorter lifespan than the current average, and so they have come to need jobs in their old age, and there are no jobs available. The difference in our world views became clear to me as I was thinking how the problem was that society is stuck on the idea that people need to perform full time jobs in order to have their basic needs met when really we could all work less if we were willing to stop obsessing over careers and stop associating people's worths with their level of employment, whereas she saw the problem as being that people live too long now. With my assumption socialism seems nearly inevitable, with the only alternative being people doing things that were totally useless to themselves and others (and almost certainly devastatingly consumeristic). I'm beginning to see why many people have major issues with socialism since while I take it as a basic assumption to take into account whenever contemplating the future that there will be a massive gap between the work that needs to be performed and the available workers, the idea has clearly never even crossed their minds. It was one of those moments when I recognized a core assumption as what it was—an assumption—which let me recognize that it might not be shared.

In the meanwhile, though, I am performing the busywork of teaching English in a part of the world that will probably overtake the English speaking world in importance and prominence in the near future. However, I don't really think of myself as an English teacher, but as a world traveler, which is a job title that is probably as close as I can possibly come to living up to my childhood imaginings.

Update: I should mention that my musings on potential were influenced by this comic.

The point at which politics, twitter, and comic books meet

Given recent events, I have reevaluated twitter. I earlier rejected it as annoying, shallow, and stupid. I maintain that this is true in most cases. However, currently in Iran it is the only way to communicate with the outside world. The government has blocked most sites, from email servers to facebook, but the way twitter is routed it is difficult to trace and block without shutting down the whole internet (they have in fact slowed it down considerably to prevent people from uploading videos or pictures). It reminds me of a scene from my favorite graphic novel, Transmetropolitan (actually, maybe it's tied with The Watchmen, but that's beside the point), where the protagonist discusses the fact that creative use of technology is out pacing the attempts to regulate or control it.

Thus, while I still don't see why anyone would want anything to do with twitter in ordinary life, it has become an important part of resistance to oppressive regimes (Obama's state department even requested that twitter not take the site down for maintenance as scheduled so that Iranians could continue to send out information.) As Andrew Sullivan has been saying for the last few days, the revolution will be twittered.

Iran

If you haven't been following the Iranian (quite possibly stolen) election you should (I recommend Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, and Juan Cole). It's fascinating.

If nothing else, this is one of the most amazing photos I've seen taken in the last few years:(hat tip Sullivan)

Existentialism and parenting, part 3

I had an odd thought today.

One of my kindergarten classes--Pluto--is particularly difficult. There are several hyperactive and attention deficit children, about four troublemakers, two others who cannot handle the troublemakers in a remotely appropriate manner, and a couple hard working smart kids (who make it difficult because without the we could just move at a slower pace). About five minutes into that class today a shy little girl named Tiffany started crying and didn't stop. I did my best to comfort her while corralling the others and trying to get them all to understand and do math problems. After the class I sat in the hall with Tiffany for about fifteen minutes with her sitting in my lap crying into my shoulder while I hugged her (a Korean teacher managed to get her to say what was wrong in Korean, and it turns out one of the boys had done something to her, but by this point--an hour later--she actually didn't remember the particular cause). While her little hand held my finger I realized that she really was comforted by my sitting with her, hugging her, and rubbing her back. I also had the odd thought that I would be a pretty good dad.

Here's the flip side of the problems existentialist beliefs cause for parenting: my nihilistic world view actually gives me qualities that are good in a parent. I have gained incredible patience; I don't let things frustrate me anymore and I try to enjoy every moment of my life regardless of my circumstances, so instead of getting impatient or bored I was able to calmly just be there for a child when she needed it. When you don't think anything matters it also means you don't get angry about people 'wasting' your 'precious' time that could be used to do 'worthwhile' things. Also, I have become infinitely more understanding of other people in the last few years. Other people still baffle me in many respects, but I have come to accept that and to understand to some degree. When I believed in objectivity I thought that there was a right way and wrong way to act, and even a right way and wrong way to think about things and value things. Now that I have come to view other value systems as legitimate (i.e. not wrong), I am much better at seeing things from other people's perspectives, which both helps me not get frustrated with them for being 'irrational', and to better understand what they really want and why.

I still don't think I'm a very good teacher because I'm not very good at managing the children as a group and balancing their various skill levels and needs, but I'm very good with them one on one. I'm less patient when they are in groups because it bothers me that they are disrupting the studies of others (something I always hated in public school), but I can deal with even the most difficult kids on an individual basis, which again, makes me think I'd be a pretty good father, assuming of course I didn't end up with septuplets or some hideous litter like that. Working with children, my increasing distance from actually being a child, and my nihilism have all made me change my feelings on having children from sheer horror to ambivalence, which is really a huge turn around if you think about it.

On a tangentially related note, I have learned a Korean sentence that I look forward to using with every missionary that knocks on my door or tries to force literature into my hand as I wait for the crosswalk light to change: "Jeonuen mooshinronja-imnida," that is, "I am a nihilist."

Existentialism and parenting, part 2

(once again taken from the glory that is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics)