Would you like to spend a month in Damyang?

I didn't think so. But yesterday was the start of the bi-yearly, month long immersion camp for Korean and foreign English teachers at the Jeollanam-do Educational Training Institute in Nam-myeon (map), Damyang county, Jeollanam-do. I am thankfully exempt from having to participate in such nonsense, but some public school teachers are forced to do it, depending on which of three programs they were hired under. So while my winter vacation consists of winter vacation, some teachers will be in a language bukkake party with tons of people who these days not speaking the English so well.

While I don't like the idea of being dormed up with strangers, people have said it's a decent time and a good chance to meet people and learn some things. You can find blog entries about it here and here. The Korean teachers have said they enjoy it as well, and you can read some of their comments on the JETI site here. They even got to meet Isaac Durst, the face of English, the embodiment of English education, and an embarassment to all foreigners:



Actually, the Jeollanam-do Office of Education will no longer pimp its teachers to the 연수원 during vacations. They have hired teachers to permanently staff JETI. According to one blogger there are eight foreigners there, and according to an old advertisement they were hiring for November with salaries of 2.6 and 3.0 million per month.

Anyway, one of my coteachers started there yesterday, and she will be away for a month. That seems a bit jarring, and I certainly wonder how a husband and children will survive without a wife to cook and clean. (The Metropolitician tells us of Cheju-do's way around this problem.) I forsee four weeks of ramyeon, beer, and computer games, while the children run around in potato sacks. Actually sounds like a nice vacation for a husband.

According to the scholars on Dave's ESL Cafe, and to another one of my coteachers, Korean English teachers now have a number of training options to choose from. They can go to camp at Damyang, or can spend a semester at the Korea National University of Education in Chungcheongbuk-do. My coteacher even said that Korean English teachers can choose to do a stint overseas in order to provide an immersion experience.

Any effort to better qualify Korean English teachers for all facets of English education should be welcomed. Part of me wishes I had an opportunity to meet attractive twentysomething Koreans mingle with more teachers, pick up teaching tips, share experiences, and perhaps meet others who speak English, but I wish there were a better way than spending a few weeks locked down on the JETI compound.

People just need to get their shit together when it comes to English. I mean, a Korean teacher my age will have had nine years of English in grade school, four years in college while taking courses through the education department, plus four years of on-the-job training. That's not accounting for extra hours spent at a hagwon, the extracurricular exposure to English almost from birth, and the countless opportunities to study, use, and speak English that present themselves on a daily basis. Turn on the TV right now and there are five different English-language programs, plus a few English-teaching ones. Look around the office and there are a half-dozen colleagues who have all had a lifetime of exposure to English. Put a few keystrokes into google and you have billions of English-language webpages at your disposal, plus countless Korean pages devoted to teaching English. And you know that white guy who used to visit your hagwon every day and talk? The one you vaguely remember telling you to open your book, or to answer a question? The one who you ignored while you tried to memorize lists of vocabulary from your Korean teacher? Yeah, maybe you should have taken advantage of his classes, rather than bitching ten years later about the lack of opportunity to talk with native speakers. And you know the white guy who sits by himself in the language lab? The one who eats lunch alone and who, a few times a semester, does a little class, or something, in front of students? They guy who is costing you a few thousand dollars a month? Yeah, maybe you should put him to good use, and include him in the fabric of your school's English department, rather than complaining later about how white people are a waste of money.

I'm for anything that improves the quality of teachers, but when there's a combined effort of thing like JETI, English Towns in every county, and trips overseas, this policy smacks of just throwing money at the problem. Or this policy smacks of no policy whatsoever. Remarkable how one of the most important, and expensive, subjects for Koreans gets no serious consideration about its study or implementation, especially with regards to foreign teachers. The apologists who fill the pages of academic journals and boring books will say that the aggressive nature of English and its spread have made students too intimidated and too ostracized to adequately learn the language. You don't find much that talks about how the presentation of foreigners and the interpretation of foreign cultures and the English language here might condition people against English.

Anyway, I'll close with a surprisingly astute observation from another Jeolla blogger:

So my last week of school and first week of holidays, I was at a camp teaching Korean English teachers how to teach English. Rather ironic considering they have had 4 years of Uni to learn how to do this and I have had none... but anyway.