Sagong Seong-dae is insightful ("they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months[.]")

One of the latest articles on the English-teaching robots from the AFP closes with this gem on the additional benefits of robots over native speaker English teachers, attributed to Sagong Seong-dae of the Korea Institute of Science of Technology:

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

That sounds like something from a parody on the pitfalls of teaching English in Korea, given how uppity foreign teachers *cough* are prone to "complaining" about not receiving the health insurance, sick leave, and severance pay contractually provided to them. He might have added that robot English teachers also don't have AIDS and aren't attracted to Korean women.


Poster created by The Waygook Effect.

Reminiscent of the president of the International Graduate School of English saying to Kang Shin-who of the Korea Times in 2009:

``Most of the native English speakers don't have much affection toward our children because they came here to earn money and they often cause problems,'' Park said.

a quotation that was later revealed to be fabricated by the reporter.

Anyway, we can't go too long without the western media writing some "news of the weird" story out of South Korea, and the English-teaching robots is the latest angle to fill that void. This most-recent batch of articles lend themselves to the same comment I made a month ago in a longer look at this misguided program:

If "English Fever" is as exceptionally high in South Korea as we observe and foreign correspondents note, and if communicative competence is as high a priority as the national curriculum has dictated for nearly a decade, it would behoove policy-makers to finally stop rash spending on gimmicks---like robots, expensive English-Only Zones, or inexperienced white people by the thousands---and start developing real solutions that produce results in the classroom, or at least ones that are suitable stand-ins until a generation of domestic English teachers can catch up to the roles in a communication-based English classroom for which they are currently unprepared.

In that AFP article readers with some knowledge of English education in South Korea will find plenty of objectionable lines and ideas. An official at the Daegu office of education said some robots "may be sent to remote rural areas of South Korea shunned by foreign English teachers," though over the past few years we've seen that it's not native speaker English teachers [NSETs] "shunning" rural areas, but rather rural areas unable or unwilling to hire and pay them. Many areas, including where I used to work, have long since stopped hiring NSETs for the public schools and have instead collected a few for regional "English Towns" where students collect for English immersion experiences once or twice a year.

Three paragraphs later the official is indirectly quoted saying she "stressed the experiment was not about replacing human teachers with robots," though the article---which relies a lot on "he said" and "she said," literally---closes with:

Sagong stressed that the robots, which currently cost 10 million won each, largely back up human teachers but would eventually have a bigger role.

The machines can be an efficient tool to hone language skills for many people who feel nervous about conversing with flesh-and-blood foreigners, he said.

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

Hell, Time magazine started its own lazy profile off just last month with "Call it the job terminator."

It is unfortunate that education officials would rather put remote-controlled tape recorders in the classroom rather than living, breathing native English speakers. The article a few times mentions the benefits of robots for shy English students, but that leads us to a point made by commenter Walter Foreman in November:

English in Korea is already too disassociated from the people that speak it (ie. it is treated as something of a novelty rather than as a tool of expression); having children talk to cute wheeble-wobble-looking robots will only help to reinforce that disassociation!

From here.

And it's ironic that these latest models will be controlled and operated by English teachers in the Philippines

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines -- who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he told AFP.

who would otherwise have a difficult time ousting a pretty white face from an English classroom, regardless of their experience and education.