According to Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Tuesday, 144 of 273 foreign English teachers who were eligible for a renewal of their contract have signed to stay on another year.
Lee Young-chan, an education Ministry official in charge of native teachers said it was not necessary to renew every contract. ``They are neither regular teachers nor lecturers who can conduct classes independently. They are `assistant teachers,' hence their teaching experience doesn't matter much,'' he said. ``Rather, it's better for students to have more new teachers so that they can meet various kinds of foreigners,'' he added.
More evidence that you're considered completely worthless.
* Update: He's a Jeolla guy.
9 comments:
Brian,
If you leave this troglodyte's racist trash up on your blog I think that myself, and others, will lose some respect for the critical perspective that you offer . . .
I'm going to turn on my comment approval setting so that I don't have to deal with the flame war that I'm sure will imminently erupt.
J
Sorry, couldn't get to it right away. I took your first comment down as well, just b/c it doesn't fit in now.
THANK YOU!
It's one thing to rant and rave in an intelligent, articulate, and humorous manner . . . and then there's the banal bilge that slipped through the cracks and onto your blog.
I spent four hours today doing research on my 'qualified' vs 'unqualified' blog, and I'm going to write a Top 10 Reasons Why Foreigners Don't Re-sign in Korea . . .
Cheers mate,
J
``I don't think native English speakers are helpful for our students. If they need native English speakers, they should hire those who have teaching licenses.''
I mean, wow. I think Korean educators need to take a look in the mirror and think why every parent with enough money sends their kid abroad. This issue is like dealing with a person so stupid that they don't even know they are stupid. However, they are making the rules and public opinion. I can't imagine how so many parents must feel. It must be confusing just trying to have your child learn English (even though they never had a chance to), and everyone is telling you all this terrible stuff. In the story, they did not even bother to quote a foreign teacher at a school (just a university). As far as I know, teachers have to switch schools at least every five years in Gyeonggi. That doesn't sound so irreplaceable to me.
Korea's English education system is in a shambles. I want to find the man running this program and kick his ass sometimes. My ultimate dream is that the English education department will hire a whole bunch of people Koreans and non Koreans who are fluent in English (this is important since many people who are in charge of English education don't even speak English) and can bring all their ideas about programming, methodology, and pedagogy together and work this crap out! It's sad because this is my passion and Korea craps all over it! But then again, until and not a minute before, Korea drops their ridiculous test taking culture there will never be any significant change. And until Korea puts people in charge based on merit and not on seniority then this will continue and it often makes me wonder why I even want to teach in Korea.
The article states that beginning foreign English teachers make the same as a Korean teacher with 5 years experience. Is he fucking kidding me?
Is anyone really that surprised by this official's remarks? Public English education here (in elementary schools, anyway) is purely for show, serving no purpose other than to make the school (and possibly Korea's education system as a whole) look good. At both of the elementary schools I've worked at, the school principal and the administrative-types have been far, far more concerned with how nice the English classroom looks, than with the quality of the teaching/learning that goes on inside it.
It's good to take your job seriously, and as foreign ESL teachers here, we can try to find job satisfaction in engaging the students with a good lesson, and possibly even teaching them something they might use for more than just getting a good score on a test. But being truly valued and respected by our coworkers/employers is just not a realistic expectation here. This is one of the reasons why I'm not going to renew my current contract, haha.
Korea doesn't really want Koreans to learn proper English, because then they would be better equipped to see through the mind-control BS of the Korea media, and thereby liberate themselves and their minds.
It's quite obvious, isn't it?
"I don't think native English speakers are helpful for our students. If they need native English speakers, they should hire those who have teaching licenses."
Let's see... Korea is #1 in the world when it comes to spending on English educations and they rank 28th (out of 29 countries) in actual test scores. Nearly dead last.
It sure is a good thing Korea doesn't need native speakers. Korean English teachers are doing a bang up job! Korean English teachers' teaching licenses must have been gotten as a Cracker Jack prize.
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