On Minutiae

VINCENT: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
JULES: What?
VINCENT: It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just, just there it's a little different.

("Pulp Fiction")

While this quote is not entirely apt (there is "some shit" over here that is not the same but rather not present back home), I think that it remains relevant.

1. While the cost of living is overall similar to many cities in the global North, some shit is by fluke randomly expensive, and some is inexplicably cheap. Oranges are at least 3 times as expensive in as in the US, while I can get wild mushrooms at 1/6th the price of what things are back home. This is pretty readily explicable in terms of proximity to points of production. However, one odd thing is that consumer electronics cost drastically more. A PC laptop will typically cost $1000 for a middle of the line unit. Macs are similarly priced, likely due to the company's ubiquitous price-fixing. I'm really close to where this stuff is manufactured.
2. Clothing dryers are not typically used (nor are ovens for that matter). I now have to plan my day more meticulously. :P
3. Coughing and clearing one's throat loudly are totally cool, but one must be highly discrete about blowing one's nose, particularly if it will make a noticeable noise.
4. Traffic lights function differently: red lights even with walking signs express something closer to "yield" to vehicles (I needed discover this but once :P).
5. Overall traffic norms are different--people are more apt to poke into spaces tentatively.
6. People also honk the horns on their vehicles more often but do so to express information rather than dismay or anger.
7. Stoves have gas valves that must be turned on and off prior to and following use. The purported rationale is to reduce the risk of explosion. Do Koreans have special stoves that are more likely to leak gas when off? :P
8. Eating is drastically communal. One rarely sees someone eating a meal alone, and if a student, for example, brings a snack, he or she will share with you, even if the item is difficult to divide up.
9. The sense of personal space is somehow different. This is not to say that it's larger or smaller in some global sense, but people seem to move toward or away from each other with a different rhythm. I haven't yet decoded this system.
10. Hosts and hostesses are drastically common. There are employees to greet and organize lines at banks, supermarkets, and even the equivalent of the DMV.

not Kosher

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Addendum

Not all entries will be criticism of schooling in Korea, I swear! But this one will be (this is in my nature and training)...I anticipate posting fun shit soon :P

Among other ideas, my school's director plans to add to our offerings extremely regimented, basic instruction in spelling and phonics, organized according to a standardized curriculum offered by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Though perhaps appropriate for very early second language learners picking up the basics, the materials are subdivided into a large number of finely gradated exercises, each highly similar to one another, perhaps to the point of mind-numbing. The Director actually considers our current varied, contextualized, dynamically adaptive style of instruction superior in instilling language ability at a variety of levels.

So why the switch? While I initially naively assumed that the demand for English language Hakwons stems primarily from a desire to raise children who will be competitive in application for schools abroad and international business, this is primarily not the case. Instead, the process of application to the more competitive universities and even high schools demands preparation for standardized testing of English language ability. As with their counterparts in the US, these tests assess primarily level of preparation for specific tests, rather than more global deployment of skills in relevant contexts later in life.

Again, as with the US, it is likely that an original impetus to engineer a population more able to excel in professional life has transmuted into disciplined submission to long hours of rote repetition for its own sake. It seems that once routinized into mass-institutions, genuine ethics of personal development tend to fall by the wayside. However, because routinized mass-educational provide metrics to assess the success of their own according educational practices, the failure of mass-education to meet its own goals of social design remains concealed. Parenting practices too are fashioned in the image of dominant metrics of mass-education, measuring the success of educational programs and their own students in terms of preparation for nationally uniform, quantitative measures. It is for this reason that my school's director has little choice but to offer this sort of program.

On Hakwons

As I mentioned, I am teaching at a Hakwon (or Hagwon, a for-profit academy, typically supplementary to other instruction). While providing a great opportunity for me, I believe the system of Hakwons to have problematic implications for the reproduction of class and childhood development in Korea. Korea has some of the most intensive practices of education in the world. For those attending private academies, A school day lasting until 10 pm is typical, and allotment of additional homework is opulent. Students with sufficient means typically attend multiple Hakwons, focusing on multiple subjects, supplementing their core public education.

I believe that this particular arrangement presents diminishing returns: by the time mid-evening rolls around, most students are utterly exhausted, their eyes glazed over from hours and hours of work, including many courses in lecture-format. Educational and kinship institutions also need be organized by harsh regiment and discipline (the latter often being physical). The lost REM sleep and consistent levels of anxiety certainly take their toll on the ability of students to go beyond memorization.

However, this is not to say that such a system is without benefit. Rates of fluency in foreign languages here are consistently high, as is prowess in mathematics. The typical Korean studying abroad will be at least a couple of years ahead in math compared to his peers in the US. The typical Korean working environment also requires adaptation to vast quantities of work, as it extends to 55 hours. For Koreans, this is obviously a double-edged sword, but conditions of international competition won't likely wane, so this trend won't likely abate.

More problematic to me, though, are the implications of the Hakwon system for the reproduction of class. Prima Facie, the system of higher education here is highly egalitarian compared to its counterpart in the States, providing a far greater quantity of need-based scholarships. Thus, one would expect increasing rates of class-mobility over time. However, the cost of tuition at private academies prohibits realization of higher-education's class-leveling potential. Obviously, Hakwons provide explicit preparation for entrance exams and key bodies of knowledge and experience for building strongly competitive university applications. But perhaps more importantly, they imbue students with the necessary disposition to act to excel in the university application process, both in terms of ease of participation in the requisite amounts and types of schoolwork. Thus, money for private education has become a key gatekeeper for entrance to upper-classes, not only in acquisition of specific credentials but also according who possesses the very ability to engage in practices necessary to make this class-transition or maintain one's class.

What interests me most is the fact that the class-structure in South Korea is relatively new, the country having transitioned from a relatively 'underdeveloped' post-colonial country bearing the ravages of its history as a venue of Cold War conflict to a key venue of world trade an industry in half a century. To what extent did prior elites retain class-privilege in transition to late-stage capitalism? What did they do to retain their class-position, and what socio-historical conditions allowed them to do so?

Fluff

Before I gather legitimate content, depicted above is something getting lost in translation (I hope)