Where The Hell Am I?: children

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Crap That I'll Miss: Fun, Smart and Hilarious Kids

Nothing is perfect and working with children can be a challenge at times. This is particularly so in Korea due to cultural differences and very demanding parents. However, pretty much since I've arrived, I've had tons of fun working at winter or summer English camps. Maybe it's because, in some ways, I'm a kid at heart. I love clowning around with them but also getting serious and seeing them absorb information from me like sponges. Now I'll be 100% honest and also say that I love sending them home at the end of the day because it's truly exhausting too. I discovered that I liked teaching kids when I taught as a substitute teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area.

However, some camp experiences have been better or worse than others. That depends on a number of factors. The most important is the experience level of the management team because a micro-manager can make a camp hell to work at. Unfortunately, there are a lot of micro-managers in Korea. One camp I worked at has a manager so into control that he made teachers sign out for copy paper and locked their classrooms after the kids left to force all the teachers in the library to write their lesson plans and prep for the next day. That was weirdness on a level I'd never seen before and, luckily, haven't seen since. However, I can count the truly unpleasant camps on one hand, so that's not too bad if you calculate 8 years. There was maybe one or two times I elected not to do a camp, so that's around 14 or so of these. Even if the camp is a nightmare on the management side, usually, the pay is decent for a two to three week assignment if you're already in the country. I don't think I'd ever do one if I had to cover my own airfare to get here though. But people are coming here sometimes to get a feel for Korea before deciding to work here for a year or use being in the country for a camp as a way to start looking for an annual position.

The perk for me is changing the type of student I teach from college age young adults to young whip smart kids. There are behavior issues, for sure. But there are behavior issues with college students too. The kids know, just as we do, that these things are temporary and some take advantage of that. However, most of the time the kids are great. I'll miss the few weeks each summer and winter that I spend doing it. This time around it's much more of a challenge because now I'm simultaneously trying to keep up with my writing and interviews. That's truly exhausting.

I also have to say I hope it helps these kids develop a more open perspective to race and people who are different. Prior to being taught by me a lot of these kids have never had much contact, if any, with a black person. Most of these kids are children whose parents are white collar workers, so they have the means and then some. Mostly all have had interaction with foreign teachers and quite a few have lived abroad. It's just the reality is that most teachers here are white and some of them are less than subtle about their views on race.

That's still really weird for me to imagine. As a kid, I remember my first teachers being white and that was no issue. I don't recall gasps or blunt observations of differences. One reason is, probably, as minorities in a white dominated society, whites simply aren't a novelty to a black child in the inner city. I remember being in a class with both black and Hispanic children when I went to schools near my home. When I started going to more integrated schools, it took me no time to develop lasting friendships with my white classmates too. So it still boggles my mind at how Korean culture is so very "us versus them." Here, anyone who isn't northeast Asian (Korean, Chinese, or Japanese) is a novelty. I get it intellectually, but I do wonder sometimes how it feels to be inside a mind like that where everything is either just like you or in stark contrast to you.

It also points to maybe one reason why it just seems so difficult for Koreans to process an interest in and knowledge of their culture by people who aren't ethnically Korean. In conversations with my Korean friends, I point out that the Chinese actually brag about their diversity. They are also neither crestfallen or defensive when you don't like something about China. Also, both the Chinese and Japanese are experts in exporting certain dimensions of their culture. It's an interesting contrast for sure.

I've wandered off the path a bit into cultural-based musing. However, to sum it up, I'll miss the fun, smart and hilarious kids I've had the pleasure to teach while I've been here.

Hello Baby!

Photo and caption from the JoongAng Ilbo website: The more educated, the more babies? There seems to be a correlation between levels of education and the fertility rate. Women and babies gather yesterday at Seoul International Mother and Baby Fair at COEX. [YONHAP]

Over the last few years the birth rate in South Korea has fallen. Of course, that sets government officials in a panic because a shrinking population is bad news for a growing economy as well as for society in general. So for the last few years there has been increased pressure on Korean women to literally breed more Korean children to keep society going. I've heard of incentives such as government aid to encourage women to get pregnant and have more children.

The headlines recently report that the birth rate has turned around after a six year slump: Number of Newborns Rises After 6 Years.

The article below explains the increase by saying there is a positive correlation between a woman's education level and the number of children she has. Of course, conventional wisdom is the more education a woman has the less likely it is that she'll have a lot of children. Now the writer explains this away as "common sense."

Educated women have more babies

It is a widespread phenomenon that well-educated, successful women are more likely to stay single longer. But a recent study by a central bank- related think tank shows that once these high achievers get married, they tend to give birth to more children than women with less education.

According to a report based on research into women between 20 and 40 years of age over a five-year period beginning in 1995, women with a higher educational background also have a better chance of marrying men with similar educational levels.

“The higher the husbands’ income as a result of higher education, the more children their wives give birth to,” said the report from the Institute for Monetary and Economic Research under the Bank of Korea.

The report presented statistical proof of what ordinary Koreans might consider common sense.

For example, for each additional year of a husband’s education, the chance of his spouse giving birth increases by 0.23 percent.

However, the direct statistical correlation between the educational level of women themselves and their birthrate was not available, said Kim Woo-yeong, the researcher who conducted the study. Mathematical complications hindered obtaining exact figures.

Another noteworthy result of the study is that women who have already given birth to a son are 7.3 percent more likely to bear children again than those who previously gave birth to a daughter.

That indicates that women who deliver sons have less psychological pressure to give birth to children regardless of gender, while those with a daughter as a first child are more prudent in their attitudes, for fear of having yet another daughter, the study said.

Kim cited this as an indication that the traditional preference for having a son still prevails in modern Korean society.

According to Kim, Korea’s fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has during her life-time, has been in a downward spiral since the late 1950s, when the post-war baby boom occurred. It tumbled to the lowest level in the world at 1.08 in 2005.

Should the downward momentum on the rate persist, Korea will see its population start to shrink around 2020.

It might very well be that, but I also see it as a difference in how Korean society works in contrast to my society. I'm arguing anecdotally 'cause I haven't looked up figures, but, in general, it seems that more education does mean less children.

However, a key difference in Korea is a woman who marries an educated man has the option to not work at all and to have a very comfortable existence. That's still very much preferred here. I do know a lot of well-to-do Korean moms who work, but they have all sorts of working mom versus stay-at-home mom drama too.

In contrast, it's lesser educated Korean women with less resources don't have the option to have a lot of children. (They marry foreigners - I'm serious, it's the rare, well-off and highly educated Korean woman I see marrying a foreigner, fooling around, okay. Marrying, no.)

The focus on education here is great, but it is also a huge money drain. Not only do parents send their kids to school, but the preference is for kids to get the kids into school abroad or into the few foreign schools that are here. If they can't then the preference is to get into the best Korean schools. There is also the hagwon culture where children keep going to school after class ends in the afternoon. They attend English classes, music classes, martial arts, etc. I've known kids to not get home until well after dark. That's expensive.

Layer on top of that just the cost of living and the hard work ethic of Koreans and I can completely see why uneducated Korean women aren't having as many children. They don't have the time or the resources. I think a lack of resources for these women is the biggest reason I believe.