Ooops!! Sorry...my bad

Well, I really messed up with my first graders today. Call it a cross-cultural misunderstanding. Korean society from top to bottom is fiercely competitive especially within peer group. By the time they're first graders, Koreans have learned the drill pretty well. Koreans are very kind to the very young, the elderly and the sick. However, they have very little liking or tolerance for those who are a little slower or need extra help largely because they pull down the entire group (be it team, society or whatever) and that is unacceptable. Even in the first grade there is an undeniable pecking order in which everyone recognizes the elite students and each kid understands his relative position in the hierarchy. The teachers recognize this system because they grew up with it and, for them, it's the natural order working itself out. Slower kids do get extra help, but "no child left behind" and the concept of upward mobility simply don't register in this culture. In the first place, no child will be left behind because each will be evaluated, slotted and placed at his proper level. They will perform at that level and be directed from there to appropriate skill training and teaching so they fit well into the "natural" scheme of society. Adults do their best to achieve within the "zone" to which they have been assigned for life and are not encouraged to think in upwardly mobile terms because the "national will" requires that each person act the role for which fate intended him.

Into the middle of this mystic contradiction steps the boob teacher from America. Honest--all I was trying to do was help a kid who was struggling a bit. How did I manage to lose some credibility with a roomful of six and seven year old moppets? If only in a small way, I violated part of the national social contract by moving one of the pieces on the great Korean chessboard of life to a wrong position. I thought the boy (who was struggling with English) would benefit from standing next to me so I could coach him a bit while having the class listen and repeat with me.
Being asked to stand at the front of the class is a position of honor reserved for the elite students and only on infrequent occasions lest they become too cocky (as was patiently explained to me later). The entire roomful of first graders immediately shut down on me because I had elevated a peer who was obviously NOT an elite student (and, ipso facto, probably never would be) to an honored position above the obviously better students. AND THIS IS THE FREAKIN' FIRST GRADE!! Everything ultimately worked out OK and the regular classroom teacher was kind in helping me understand that, like Dorothy and Toto, I wasn't in Kansas any more. It makes me wonder how a Korean teacher would do in the U.S. where every child must be a "winner", there are no allowed losers, everybody feels good (whatever that means) and delicate little psyches are constantly massaged into mass mediocrity. (End of didactic pontification).

How's your psyche doing today? A good day to all from The Land of the Morning Mist.

Til later, The Kaper KId