The Trouble with Us and Them
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2004
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28
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Trip End
Apr 02, 2005
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Monday, February 21, 2005
And then the scandal to end all ESL scandals, the recent posting of a 'manifesto' by a foreign male teacher on English Spectrum, forcing the prominent website to shut down. The title of the posting? "How to Molest Your Students". No wonder there's a mood of anger and suspicion towards foreign teachers these days. We're clearly a bunch of rabid animals.
Alcoholism and under-qualified and/or illegal teaching is common. Dalliances between teachers and students are nothing new, and neither is Korean people's easily-aroused xenophobia
Early Days
. In a country with such a large ESL industry these are difficult realities to confront without moral indignation and major differences in opinion. On-line and in TV news documentaries recently, the whole expat teaching "community" has come under scrutiny, and it's not looking so good. The demand for teacher is high all across Asia, and the better paying jobs are in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. But Japan has a reputation for being far more demanding of it's teachers. Professionalism and training are more standard there, while Taiwan is still a little off the beaten track for most prospective teachers.
Korea is a cake walk for anyone with the right accent and skin colour. Little more than a pulse and a white face is necessary. People of colour and those with strong accents are rarely hired here, though some Scots and Irish fake their accents in phone interviews. It's a little harder to fake race, and recruiters admit to telling coloured applicants to apply to less racist countries.
Aside from physical attributes, foreign teachers are required by law to have a university degree, whether or not it's applicable to teaching English.
Field trip
An ESL certificate won't cut it without a degree, but fake degrees are widely available on-line and you don't have to go to Bangkok to get one. So who's to blame? Some unscrupulous expats will use fake degrees to get a job here. But they can only get away with it because background checks are rarely thorough or conducted at all. If someone at a university can ride a fake degree for over two years without being caught then it's open season at smaller institutes and private language schools.
A common excuse for not doing background checks is that head teachers and principals are too busy to corroborate references. Ten minutes on the phone, when you're hiring someone for a year contract, doesn't seem too much to expect but it just does not happen. And as long as there is no meticulous screening process the issue will continue to go largely unchecked.
And then there's the sex. Drugs are virtually nonexistent in Korea, and booze is nothing really. Alcohol abuse does little to engender any wide-spread animosity toward foreign teachers. The American GIs catch most of the flak for drunken dis-orderlies. But when it comes to foreign men and female students, or Korean girls in general, the boundaries are radically redrawn
SLP Staff
. It's common to see white guys and Korean girls together. Many expats here have the Asian fever and don't end up here by accident. Korean women are beautiful, smart and fun to be with. Just ask Nicholas Cage. Korean men can be extremely weary of these couplings and feel that foreign guys steal their women. There's also a clear imbalance in the equation, as there are far more expat males than females, and western women rarely date Korean men. If I was a Korean guy I'd probably be pissed too.
But attitudes change significantly when the Korean girl is a student of the foreign guy. It's not as rare a circumstance as many would like. I'm no puritan, but let's just say I'd rather teach children than face the temptation of much older students. And temptation it is. Teachers are not always the instigators of affairs in universities, and yes, high schools. It's distasteful perhaps, but a reality nnonetheless
Yet again herein lies the rub. If a teacher is caught having a relationship with a student, more often than not they are transfered to another school instead of being disciplined and/or prosecuted and deported. And in at least one case I'm aware of the teacher was actually assisted in finding a job at another university
Teacher, What's Smut?
. With such leniency it's hard to point the finger with any real conviction.Sometimes, however, the problem is clear and chilling. A number of weeks ago the posting that shut down English Spectrum caused a shudder through those foreign teachers and Koreans who were paying attention. And now that it's been picked up by the media, and incorporated into the other stories of alcohol and drug abuse and unaccredited teaching it's even more troubling for the confusion and uunfocusedanger it produces among the general public.
Whether or not it was a joke is irrelevant. Some guy posted a rather long discussion, rather like a how-to manifesto, about how to seduce students. He even went as far as dividing up tactics by the age of the student, and suggested things like targeting girls with few friends, using candy and gifts to lure them in, and in a nod to Michael Jackson, using alcohol in foods ("Cook with rum," he instructs). With such thoroughness it's hard to imagine this guy was joking, though why he would have posted it is anyone's guess.
For some time there were rumours of who he was and what happened to him. Right after the posting there was talk of roving gangs of Korean men looking to hassle mixed couples in Hongdae, and one rumour that the guy had been found and bludgeoned to death. In a culture so easily driven into a rage this wasn't impossible, but nothing about the story made it into the papers.
Most foreign teachers are not alcoholics, drug fiends or fakes. We're certainly not sexual predators. Regardless of the media firestorm brewing around these issues nothing will change, and Korean parents will continue to send their children to over-priced schools with under-qualified and often indifferent foreign teachers. It's a cycle that will largely remain unbroken, and something I will not miss when I leave this country.
