Atlanta Journal-Constitution on young Americans coming to Korea to "teach."

Bill Hendrick wrote a piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about young Americans who "flock" to South Korea to teach because they can't, or don't want to, find work back home. This was already discussed on The Marmot's Hole, with special attention paid to the lifestyle of recent grad Jeremy Salzman:

Out of college, out of money and out of luck in a lackluster economy with millions of people out of work, Jeremy Salzman felt trapped after college graduation, facing a certain loss of freedom and an uncertain stretch under the watchful eyes of his parents.

So when the newly-minted graduate of the University of Michigan had to choose between returning to Atlanta to look for a job or signing on for a hitch as an English teacher in South Korea, it was a no-brainer.

He’s now teaching kids in a private school 7,000 miles away, with no professors or parents to answer to, no homework, and maybe best of all, no rules and no curfew.

. . .

So far, he’s having the time of his life, and also, he feels, providing invaluable help to youngsters there. He works at least eight hours daily, then parties by night, often into the wee hours, with other expatriates, most from the U.S. or Canada, but some from Britain, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand.

He goes to a gym daily, swills SoJu, a stiff vodka-like drink, fills up on Korean barbeque and sees “amazing” sights.

“I am not an English major, and people in America would not want me to teach their kids English…what I am good at and enjoy doing is helping kids become successful at something.”

He adds: “I came to live out a once in a lifetime experience that I won’t have the opportunity to do again when I have a real job.”

The Korean media often goes out of its way to make us look bad, and in the past we've seen western outlets take their shots at native speaker English teachers, too. But while the "reporting" of Kang Shin-who and Choi Hui-seon, two of 2009's worst, is inexcusable, this ACJ article reminds us that often teachers themselves make teachers look bad. It's not the media yelling their head off in the parking lot at 3 am, it's not the media being crude on the subway, and it's not the media acting like jackasses wherever you see foreign English teachers acting like jackasses. A good bit of the blame goes to schools, and I'll talk more about this in a second, that have for years hired pretty much anybody with a degree, a pulse, and a passport from the right country. And perhaps some blame goes to veterans at these schools and in the community for not setting better examples for younger teachers and not holding them accountable for inappropriate behavior. But what certainly needs to happen is teachers, whether they're two months or two decades out of school, need to approach this profession with the maturity expected not only of a teacher, but of an adult.

I'm going to get more into that in a little bit, but I'd like to mention that often when I read articles about Korea written overseas, they strike me as incomplete and, to be honest, rather poorly done. An example that comes quickly to mind is the National Post article in December on the Anti-English Spectrum, and another is a "puff piece" in the New York Times on Korea's "elite schools" and the students they produce, taken apart by Scribblings of the Metropolitician nearly two years ago. When I read articles on Korea, especially from unlikely sources, I always wonder where they get their information, where they get their interviews, and where they get their ideas for the stories in the first place. In the National Post article, a teacher in Korea fed the reporter the story, and it doesn't look like much additional effort went into it. And when reading this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, I wondered if this Jeremy Salzman wasn't a relative or a friend of the family that he would attract the attention of an unlikely newspaper. That doesn't look out of the realm of possibility, since Facebook tells me Jeremy graduated from an Atlanta high school and some Googling shows me that Hendrick's son spent time in Korea.

We can't judge Jeremy as a teacher based on a couple sentences---but if you have time you can judge him based on his blog---and certainly drinking soju and staying up late doesn't make him any different than the Koreans in all walks of life who do the same. We can, though, call Jeremy a dumbass for representing himself and his profession in a newspaper like that, and for being a poor spokesman for the thousands of Americans teaching in South Korea who, even if this isn't their career or "real job," still approach their work with class, professionalism, and a sense of decorum. What I found especially interesting was in light of a Dong-A Ilbo article from January, using an officer at the Korean Consulate in Washington D.C., with the headling "More Elite US Grads Teaching English in Korea." One of the American teachers mentioned in the article graduated from UNC, and if that's elite---it's one of the top state schools in the country---surely Michigan is elite as well, and surely Jeremy would be considered an excellent hire on paper. It demonstrates the point I made that simply judging teachers based on where they earned their degrees is no different than the superficial hiring process you have now, and, as I said in a comment on The Marmot's Hole, "clearly 22 is 22."

We need to keep in mind, even if Bill Hendrick chose not to explore this area, that this is the EFL industry South Korea has chosen to build. Recruiters and schools will hire anybody who meets the basic qualifications set down by the government---a degree, a clean background, and the right passport---and make little effort to screen or interview applicants before they're brought to Korea. Recruiters advertise positions by talking up the benefits, but not the professional responsibilities. You can find numerous examples, but here's one I cite frequently, from Park English:

Why Korea?
-Annual salary of US $24-35K at 30 hrs/wk
-Renewable 12-month contract
-Gain international experience while enriching students lives
-Safe, modern country with the highest investment in private education in the world
-Intriguing language, rich culture and central location for continued travel in Asia
-Great ongoing positions available year-round
-FREE furnished housing, FREE round-trip airfare, paid holidays, health insurance coverage, etc.
-Save up to $15K/year

Politicians and reporters pay lip-service to "qualified teachers," but not only show an unwillingness to pay for quality, but demonstrate no idea of what a "qualified" English teacher actually is. All of this goes back to the lack of planning and preparation put into this native speaker English teacher experiment, and ultimately to a lack of direction that makes it very difficult to figure out exactly what ought to be required of foreign English teachers.

This article, now that it's been written-up by me, The Marmot's Hole, and other teachers like I'm no Picasso, has most likely gotten more attention than it otherwise would have were it buried in an Atlanta paper. It's also reached Korean readers who otherwise would never have seen it. It was worth addressing, though, and is worth concluding with a few examples of people who need to get a clue. Jeremy needs to get a clue, and so do others in his situation who don't approach the job with the professionalism befitting a teacher. The people who run the English business in Korea need to get a clue, because right now we can easily make the claim that "professionalism befitting a teacher" does not easily apply to most cases in South Korea. And overseas reporters need to get a clue, because writing about teaching in Korea requires more sophistication than some emails about an extended frat party with an apartment and health insurance. Young Americans coming to Korea to teach, or "teach," is hardly anything new, and all too often overseas reporters are late to the party, to use a potentially inappropriate turn of phrase. And it shows.