Month: December 2019

Content warning: Long, rambly, and heavy. There are Bible verses used unironically to argue about the world.

Allow me, if you will, to get religious with you for a few minutes. It’s a cliche that Jesus is the “reason for the season,” but I’m not sure that people – especially those of you who are not religious – can fully appreciate the power of Christmas. Christmas is far, far more than Jesus’s birthday (I mean, he was actually born roundabouts September, so yeah). Christmas, I think, is not just a celebration, or an occasion for gift-giving, or an excuse for lights and decorations and parties and frivolity. No, Christmas is more than an anything an occasion for joy.

Because Christmas is a glimpse of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

Let me explain.

Most people – most Christians, even – don’t really study the teachings of Jesus. In a technical sense, I mean. They know all the stuff about “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek,” but there’s lots of parts of his message that are often lost. I don’t intend this as a criticism! There’s nothing at all wrong with just picking up the general moral thrust of Christ’s message from the church and just going with that. But to fully appreciate Christmas, we need to dive in a little.

Fundamental to Jesus’s message is the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. He mentions it over 100 times in the Gospels. At heart, the Kingdom of God is the moral and social re-ordering that Jesus brings: the fallen world will be overthrown and replaced with a new order, one of peace, righteousness, and justice at its heart.

But this is not a sudden event. This is not Christ come again in Glory to destroy the princes of the world and proclaim His divine reign in fiery letters writ across the sky. No, the Kingdom of God is a process – it is a gradual transformation. And it’s one that’s already ongoing. It’s a process that started more than two thousand years ago, in Galilee:

And He said, “How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? “It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR can NEST UNDER ITS SHADE.”

Mark 4:30-32

You see? It grows. The Kingdom of God starts small – it did start small – but from there it will grow, until ultimately it is so large that it dominates everything around it. The tree does not appear out of nowhere fully formed – neither does the kingdom. It begins from a tiny seed, and spreads.

It isn’t something Christians wait for, but something Christians must work for.

Consider another:

And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.

And:

“And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

And

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Various chapters of Matthew and Luke. Look ’em up if you want.

In short, the Kingdom is something that you have to work in order to bring about. It’s not something that just happens, but is instead something that we have in our power to create. We – you, me, all of us – have the power to bring this world a little bit more into line with the will of the Almighty, that is, to make it a bit more joyful, a bit more peaceful, a bit more just, a bit better – to make it a little more like Heaven. It’s something we’ve been working on for 2,000 years at this point.

Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Matthew 3:1

Note that John preached that it was at hand, imminent, two millennia ago – the Kingdom is not the end of the world. It’s part of the world already. It is here.

What am I driving at, with this? And what does it have to do with Christmas?

In short, the Christmas season is this time, above all others, when I think that the Kingdom is made most obvious in the world, the most manifest. Why?

Because Christmas is the time when we feel most comfortable loving our neighbors. And at heart, that is all the kingdom is: a place where we dwell in love with everyone around us.

We’re not comfortable talking about love, I think. Or maybe it’s just me. I’m not. I tend to be a somewhat private person, unless I’m talking to a computer screen and pretending that this is basically just a diary. But love has connotations of romantic love, the attraction between a man and a woman*, which is an artifact of the limited nature of the English language. Love, though, is more than just an erotic connection between two people – love is any connection between people. It’s a force that calls on us and demands that we place the needs of others above our own desires – that we do everything we can to help our brother. But love is so much more than an action:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:7-12

Whoever loves knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God.

God is love.

In my opinion, that passage of 1 John – is the greatest insight of Christianity, and the rock-solid foundation of the entire faith. Love is divine. When you work for the good of another, when you sacrifice for them, protect them, help them, you are touching the divine. You experience the presence of God.

Consider, then, what happens: the more you love, the more you experience God. It needn’t be radical love for people you have never and will never meet. The love of parents for children, of siblings for each other, love between friends – this all is love, and this all connects us to God.

What does love look like? If we love someone, how should we act? I’ve got one more passage I’d like to share.

But now I will show you a more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels – but have not love – I am only a resounding cymbal or a clanging gong.

If I have the gift of prophecy – and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains – but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames – but have not love, I gain…nothing.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast – it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily-angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres.

Love never fails.

– 1 Corinthians, chapter 13

God is love. When we love, we are in the presence of God. The kingdom of God, then, is the kingdom of love. And what is love?** Patience. Kindness. Humility. All the characteristics Paul listed – that is how we should live with our fellow man at all times. The more we can do this, the more the mustard seed grows, drawing closer to the day when its shady branches shall shelter us all.

You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you help someone? That little inner glow that fills you and warms you and gives you contentment that here, now, at least for this little moment, in this little corner all is right with the world? That’s divinity. The Holy Spirit – whatever you want to call it, you are touching God. It’s one of the best feelings in the world – like summer, in the midst of winter. It’s our soul shining the way it was meant to – hence, the summer of the soul in December.

So let me bring it back to Christmas, one last time. I’ve gone on long enough. At Christmas time, we most allow ourselves to feel love.

It is this time, above all others, when we give most to charity. When we throw the change into the Salvation Army’s bucket. It is this time when we’re most patient with each other – or when we should be, at least. Insults and slights that might ruffle our feathers at other times we let fade, because hey, it’s Christmas, right? We forgive ongoing feuds with each other. We catch up with old friends. And, of course, we give gifts.

Everywhere you go at Christmastime, you see people affirming their dedication to each other. It’s not about the gifts. It’s about the thinking of others, and trying to find ways to make them happy, to show them you care. It’s about reflecting on our common humanity, and the fact that really we’re all trapped here together, and we can make our time together light and easy, or we can make it miserable and burdensome. Imagine everyone making one choice and sticking to it!

In short, then, Christmas is the one time of year when everyone at least pays lip service to the idea of putting others’ needs before their own, when we all allow ourselves to feel and to express our love for each other. So, this Christmas, just be kind to one another. Find someone in need – there are many, I assure you – and reach out.

And that’s what the Kingdom of God is. Christmas, then, is a glimpse of the kingdom. A time for us to see what awaits us once we get that mustard seed all nice and grown up over the whole world. And that’s why Jesus really is the reason for the season.

Christmas is so much more than a birthday.

** Or whoever. I’m not here to judge.
** Baby, don’t hurt me…

Every ten years – and again, the year after that – I fight one of my most futile and petty battles: when, properly, a decade is considered to have ended. As 2019 races towards 2020, this debate has reared its ugly head once more.

Well, no one else is talking about it but me, so I guess I’m the one doing the rearing. Well, so be it.

See, most people follow the simple and intuitively appealing rule that when the number in the 10s digit changes, bam! New decade. So the Seventies ended when 1979 became 1980, the Eighties ended when ’89 rolled over to ’90, and so on.

Regrettably, these people are wrong.

What follows is a repost of a little essay I wrote ten years ago, arguing with people. It didn’t convince anyone then and it won’t convince anyone now, but I’m still sharing it because I’m stubborn, dammit.

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When, properly, does a decade end? It seems this debate crops up every ten years. Indeed, it is a glorious debate stretching back centuries. In the January 1, 1801 edition of Boston’s Columbian Centinel, a reader letter commented on “the daily altercation known as the Century Dispute” by predicting that “if we could be indulged with a peep upon earth a hundred years hence we should find our children as warmly engaged untying this knotty point as ever we have been.” Indeed, two centuries hence here we are.

The divide between the two camps is well-known, their point of contention bitter. On one side, there is the “0-9” camp, relying primarily upon the seemingly forceful “isn’t it stupid for the year 1960 to be part of the 50’s and not the 60’s?” argument. On the other sits the “1-0” crowd, which asserts that the beginning of the calender is a 1, not a 0, and can’t you people count?

Of course, if you go with *sniff* informed opinion, there is no debate at all. For example, there is the lively debate that raged over whether the twentieth century would begin in 1900 or in 1901. A poll of fourteen college presidents yielded only two who argued for 1900: Caroline Hazard of Wellesley and L. Clark Seelye of Smith. And whoever heard of Wellesley and Smith? I haven’t and I haven’t bothered to Google them, so all force of logic dictates that they’re probably terrible. The New York Times sniffed that, ““facts and reason, the authority of all dictionaries, and the support of every chronologer and historian that ever lived, to say nothing of the invariable understanding and custom of all lands and ages” pointed clearly to a 1901 start date, dismissing “the delusion that there is a controversy as to when the twentieth century begins.”

It was not alone. The Atlanta Constitution was also firm for 1901, refusing to call ninety-nine years a century even though it endorsed the free-silver scheme of calling sixty cents a dollar. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while endorsing 1901, suggested deciding the issue in true American fashion by holding a referendum.

Elite opinion in Europe was also deeply concerned over the weighty controversy. Astronomers and leading newspapers such as the Times of London were quite clear as to the 1901 start date. However, the imperial council of the Kaiser in Germany decreed that the 20th century would start in 1900. “Now let it decree that black is white,” responded one American newspaper; another called the Kaiser “the only man of any prominence who cannot count up to one hundred.” As things turned out, the Kaiser’s chronological slip-up was one of the lesser mistakes that Germany would make in the twentieth century.

The 1901 start date also recieved “official” status when it was endorsed by the Pope Leo XIII. Since the Catholic church is responsible for creating the Gregorian calender, presumably they would know. While that clears up matters for Catholics, Protestants and other heathens are unfortunately still left to unravel the knotty problem for themselves.

A simple appeal to commonsense further cements the position of “1 to 0”: Quick! Count to 10. Which number did you start with? 0? Or 1? You started with 1, unless you were anticipating my response and so started with 0 deliberately to confound me. Nice try, but that doesn’t count, so shut up. You learn to count 10 numbers ending at “10” in the first grade.

If you have 99 pennies, do you have a dollar? Does your second dollar begin when you hit 100 pennies? Or is the 101st penny the 1st penny of your second dollar? If you are counting pennies to make a dime, will 9 do? Or do you need 10? I suspect the US Department of the Treasury will back me up in confidently asserting that 10 is the requisite amount. Yet, if we are counting years instead of pennies, suddenly the magic number is the jump from 9 to 10? I think not!

Perhaps recognizing that in the “official” or “technical” battlefield they are utterly outmatched, the “0 to 9″ers retreat to the field of culture. Most of society believes that the decade ends tonight, and besides, isn’t it an informal designation, not at all resembling a century or a millennium (they are, of course, inescapably wrong concerning those epochs: The new millennium didn’t begin until 2001, sorry).

First off, numbers are irrelevant. Ten thousand people embracing the same error does not mean that the one dude who disagrees is wrong. That being said, there is some weight to the “cultural” argument. A decade can, after all, be any ten-year period. It need not be a formal progression in an orderly manner since Christ Himself. However, if we accept this, what is the culural marker that ends this decade, eh? Why the ten years from 2000 to 2009? There is nothing to distinguish 2009 from 2010 at all!*

When people refer to the “Sixties,” or the “Seventies,” the “Eighties” or the “Nineties,” they refer to a specific set of cultural markers: Long hair, miniskirts, hippies, Vietnam, or oil shocks, disco, bell bottoms, the afro, or leg warmers, big hair, Ronald Reagan, really awful music, or flannels, the “grunge” look, and the like. Thus, it is generally accepted that the year 1960 was culturally part of the 50’s. The ’80s are generally held to begin in 1981, with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as President, and end in 1991 or so, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ’90s, as we think of them, did not really begin until after this period, perhaps not even until the election of Bill Clinton, and the current decade culturally probably began in 2001 (for obvious reasons). There is nothing new about this. Historians often refer to the “Long 19th century,” the period lasting from 1789 to 1914 that was essentially unified in terms of culture.

So, if you’re just arguing that the decade is a cultural term, well, then. Point out what dramatic event in 2009 brought this particular 10 year period to a close (and if you say anything at all involving Barack Obama I will hunt you down and punch you in the face). You can’t. There’s nothing. We can’t know what ended the “Aughts” (or the “naughties” in Britain) until sometime after it ends.**

To conclude: All the weight of “official” opinion backs up the “1 to 0” camp. The others are reduced to making the argument that it is a cultural term of measurement, not “official” – but then can’t explain why this particular decade must end in 6 hours, as opposed to another year and six hours.

Besides, the Pope hisownself is on my side, and that’s the next best thing to Jesus. Who can argue with the freakin’ Pope?

So, to conclude, I think it fitting to share a little poem composed by the Connecticut Courant marking the turn from the 18th to the 19th century back in 1801:

Go on, ye scientific sages,
Collect your light a few more ages,
Perhaps as swells the vast amount,
A century decade hence you’ll learn to count.

So shut up.

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*This is true in 2019 as well.

**In retrospect, probably the Tea Party election of 2010 or the Arab Spring of 2011 mark the transition.

This post has been a passion project of mine for about 6 weeks now.

See, I’ve heard it often said that American schools are failing, and that we could learn a lot from the way places like, say, Korea*. I think that’s wrong for a number of reasons.

First, it’s all but impossible to make generalizations about the entire American school system. American schools are organized on a district-by-district basis, educate literally tens of millions of students, and are spread across an entire continent in a wildly diverse array of towns, cities, landscapes, economies, cultures, races, religions, and so on. There is no “typical” American school. Do you take the private prep school in Connecticut as an example, or the tribal reservation school in Montana? The massive Los Angeles high school, or the little rural Mississippi schoolhouse?

No, American schools have to be taken on a case-by-case basis. My own experience is hardly the most extensive, but I’ve had the privilege to work alongside some brilliant educators in a great district at Clayton (shout out to Deb, Aimee [both Aimees], Richard, Barry, Josh, Jo, Mel, Spencer, Heather, Susan, Chris, Dave, Rob, Kate, Stephanie, Julie, Sarah, Mike, Paul, AnnMarie, Mark, Cassie, April, Erin, Jennifer, Caitlin, and others – let me take a moment to say that I admire each and every one of you individually, from your talent in the classroom to the love and enthusiasm you bring to your work each day. Having the opportunity to work and learn alongside all of you was one of the greatest blessings of my life. Keep it up), and I’ve also worked at some not-so-great schools. So, there is no “American” school that we can point to as representing all of American education.

Second, I don’t think Korean education is a system we necessarily want to import. It might work for Koreans, but not for us.

Let me explain.

Why Korean Schools are Not American Schools

The Korean education system is widely touted as one of the best in the world. Korean students’ high achievement scores in math and literacy are often cited as showing the superiority of the Korean way, and as an indictment of countries with lower average scores (most often the USA).

Everything that follows is based on my own personal observations and opinions and should be in no way treated as authoritative – but if you want a view from the Korean trenches it may serve.

The bottom line is I think there’s something to the stereotypical view – Korea has certain cultural and institutional advantages, and its education system is practically designed to achieve good test scores. However, I also think that a focus on test scores alone masks a lot of serious problems with Korean education, and I am not at all convinced that the system is the best means of preparing Korea’s young citizens to face the future.

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Korea’s Cultural Advantages

It’s very important to understand that Korea is not like the US. I have no doubt that many of you are reading this now and either snorting or rolling your eyes at an obvious assertion, but I just want you to pause and appreciate it for a moment: Korea is not the US. We understand that intellectually, but that has important consequences on the cultural level.

The main thing is Korea’s Confucian culture. Confucian ethics heavily emphasize duty, responsibility, and hierarchy. Sons have a duty to respect, honor, and obey their fathers. Fathers in turn have a duty to defend and provide for their sons. The Korean worldview (which is shifting somewhat as Korea integrates with the modern, largely-Western world) neatly places everyone into their place into the hierarchy: Parents over children, elders over the young, men over women, etc. Now, individualist Western sensibilities chafe at this, but it’s important to note that Koreans are fully aware that the West does things differently, but they don’t really care. The way they do things is perfectly natural and works well for them. They view us the same way we view them.

So, most people (not all – just as there are Westerners that want to promote more communal ethics over our own individualist ethos, there are Koreans who want to make their own society less communal) are perfectly comfortable in this system. This sense of heirarchy is everywhere. Young people I’ve never met before are unfailingly polite and respectful, both from my status as an elder (I’m only 30! I’m not old) and as a teacher (when they know I’m a teacher, which is a fair guess when you see a Westerner here – probably an English teacher). Young people are socialized their entire lives to obey their parents and their teachers.

Now, what do those parents and teachers want them to do? To learn. Education is almost holy to Koreans. Everyone here respects and honors getting a good education. Top to bottom, from the President all the way down, the message is universal: you must get a good education and go to a good university. Korea is an extremely proud and patriotic nation, and one of their badges of honor is their educational attainment. It is every students’ duty to uphold that and contribute to Korea’s continuing dominance in the world rankings (they especially need to keep ahead of the hated Japanese).

These two factors – Koreans’ respect for elders/teachers, and the society-wide veneration of education – means Korean schools have an influence over Korean students to a degree Western teachers can only dream about. Seriously, I used to teach middle school in the USA, and the difference is night and day. Student behavior here is an absolute dream and it’ll be hard for me to go back to the, uh, livelier environment of an American middle school. The result of this school power is that schools can ask a lot more of Korean students than American schools do. If Americans tried some of the things I’m about to tell you, well, they’d not only have students but parents also revolting. They’d never get away with it. But in Korea, parents will – almost – always support the teachers over the students.

The Korean school system – an overview

Korean schools are modelled after the US system, due to the long-standing presence of American troops and the accompanying bleed-through of US culture in the country. Students attend 6 mandatory years of elementary school and 6 years of secondary, split between 3 years of mandatory middle school and 3 years of “optional” high school. High school, while neither mandatory nor free, is basically universal among Koreans due to the society’s intense focus on educational achievement.

Students learn math, science, “life skills” like pro-social behavior, and, starting in 3rd grade, English, history, and other “soft” subjects in elementary school. Middle school is more of the same, with an increasing focus on English, math, and science. High schools are split into general academic subjects (about ¾ of students), “vocational” schools (about ⅕), and specialized private prep schools (like the one I teach at).

English proficiency is an obsession with the country. The language is mandatory starting in 3rd grade, and the Korean government is heavily focused on promoting competent English education, including paying its own teachers to live for extended periods of time in English-speaking countries and offering native English speakers very generous contracts indeed to come over and teach their own students (now you know why I’m here). Many high schools and universities are taught exclusively in English. In addition, there are possibly thousands of private English academies in the country – I pass posters and ads for them all the time.

All of this is aimed at the big event: the CSAT. This event, held in November every year, is THE college admission test in Korea. The results of this single test is the highest of high stakes for Korean students – just short of life or death (actually, given the suicide rate, for many students it IS literally life or death). Traffic shuts down and the government runs extra busses and subways to make sure students make it to the test on time. Air traffic over Korea is shut down for the 8 hours the listening portion of the test takes place in.

The baseline for admission to Korea’s top three universities (Seoul University, Korea University, and Yonsei University, “SKY”) is a near-perfect score.

Tailor-made for tests

The result of all this is intense, even insane competition amongst Korean students. No reputable job will look twice at them if they fail to have a degree from a top university. Worse, their friends, their family – everyone will be disappointed in them if they fail. In the heavily Confucian culture of the country, this is an almost unbearable shame. It’s difficult for Westerners, at least those of us from guilt cultures like America, to empathize, but imagine how your family would look at you if they knew you, I don’t know, hosted dog-fighting rings for fun or had a huge stash of kiddy porn. Well, maybe not that extreme, but you get the idea. Failure is unthinkable.

But for many students, failure is inevitable. There are millions of students jostling for a very limited selection of spots. There’s no way for all of them to get in. The result, then, is an arms race. Private schools, tutors, hours upon hours of study – any edge students, and especially parents, can find for their kids, they take, starting as early as elementary school. Anything less results in your child falling behind, and that is doom.

Most schools know this, and respond. Korean education is very grade-focused, and the reputation of drill-drill-drill, rote-memorization is, while a bit exaggerated, not entirely inaccurate. Schools demand perfection in memorization and recital, whether of math facts, of complicate chemical equations, or a massive list of English idioms for some goddamn reason (I still don’t get that last one). I once was called in and chastised by my principal because my students were averaging scores of 90 on my tests and I needed to get that down to 80.

So, all of Korean education is optimized around students delivering the best score they possibly can on a single standardized test at the culmination of their academic career. Their entire culture, society – the whole support network students have access to is dedicated to this one goal. Thus, of course you get a system that is very, very good at churning out students that will score well on standardized tests!

But all that optimization comes at a high price.

Costs

Let’s talk about my own personal experience. I teach English at a gifted high school – and right there was my first cultural shock. A gifted high school would never fly in the United States. Why not is left as an exercise for the reader. For my part, it’s a dream job. I only have 3 or 4 total preps a week (barely 20% of my middle school preps), the administration is supportive, and the students not only are imbued the Korean spirit of subordination and respect, but also are motivated, talented, and proud of earning their place at the school. That makes instruction a breeze – behavior problems are totally absent from the school and I can focus solely on providing content. I’m not a babysitter here. In fact, the only trouble I ever have with students is one common problem: They sleep in class.

Big deal, you think. They’re teenagers. Teenagers sleep in class all the time. And you’re right! They do! In this way they are no dfferent than American teenagers.

But the way Korean students sleep is different than American students. The students shuffle in at the start of class, take their seats while waiting for the bell to ring, and immediately nod off. Some will sleep until the bell rings, then do their best to stay attentive through the lesson. Others – well, not so much. They remind me of nothing so much of stories I’ve read of soldiers in combat zones, who quickly master the art of sleeping whenever they have a spare moment. They resemble veterans in other ways – Korea’s suicide rate is the highest in the OECD, and suicide is the leading cause of death among Korean teenagers. The most commonly cited reason? Academic stress.

No wonder, either. Here’s my students’ biweekly schedule.

At 7:30, wake-up music blasts through the dormitory (I was allowed to set the playlist during Halloween week, and you bet your ass I scheduled all the spooky music I could. Halloween isn’t really a thing here, but it’s my favorite holiday so by God I’m making it a thing). The students must all rise from their beds and report to a check-in desk, which will note that all students are awake and up. If a student fails to check in, a teacher will be sent to investigate.

By 8:00, all students are out of the dorms. They can go to the mess hall for breakfast, if they like. Breakfast is typical fare – rice, some sort of fish soup, kimchi. The same food they’ll eat for lunch, and for dinner.

8:20, and they need to report to home room. Many students have opted to skip breakfast so they have more free time, so they will straggle in from all over campus. Following 20 minutes of home room, the school day begins – 50 minute classes with 10 minute passing periods, plus a lunch period. No individualized classes here – they move with the same group all day. The ~16 people in their home room will be their main companions for the entire academic year.

At 4:20, the final class ends and it’s time to clean the school. They scatter to the various rooms, dig out cleaning implements from various cupboards built for the purpose, and swiftly sweep, take out the trash, dust, etc.

4:40 and their “special after school club” begins. Basically this is another class – math, physics, chemistry, some subject that they selected. You choose at the beginning of the year and, of course, cannot switch. Many have said that their biggest regret at school was choosing the wrong club.

At 6:00, it’s time for dinner. Same stuff as lunch – rice, fish soup, kimchi, some form of meat dish usually. Same as breakfast will be in the morning.

At 7:00, it is time for “self-study.” Self-study consists of the students gathering in a large study hall filled with individual study cubicles. They will set up, each in their own cubicle, and spend the next two hours hitting the books.

At 9:00, they get a break.

At 9:20, self-study resumes. Another two hours. Same as the first. Some admit they have difficulty concentrating at this time.

At midnight, the dorms are at last unlocked. The students are allowed to return to their rooms and to sleep. Most don’t, of course. They have been unable to socialize outside of mealtimes literally all day, so most stay up for one to three hours talking with their friends and visiting. It is their only free time during the day. Most go to bed around three am.

Four and a half hours later, the morning music blasts again and it resumes.

Saturdays, there are no classes. Instead, students spend the morning at a special club – maybe sports, if they were smart enough to sign up for baseball or badminton or soccer – or else writing, art, music, one of the finer arts. In the afternoon, after lunch, self-study time resumes. This will last in 4-hour sessions, with breaks and a meal, until bedtime.

Sunday, they have self-study in the morning, and then the afternoon is free.

Every other weekend, they are allowed to visit home.

Now, my high school is an intensive, elite high school dedicated to training Korea’s gifted and talented children in the ways of science. Surely normal high schoolers don’t have it so bad, you’d think? And you’d be right! …sort of.

Not all high schools are boarding schools (although many are). And no elementary or middle schools are. However, such is Korea’s intense focus on education, and such is parents’ obsessive competition to get their children into a top university, that letting your kid only study at school is for fools and beggars. Everyone else ponies up for private tutoring, most commonly hagwons.

Every expat teacher in Korea knows hagwon horror stories. These soulless institutions crouch inside virtually every Korean office block, gaudy advertisements outside blaring that they will give hopeful parents’ kids a leg up in math, in science, in English. And some of them do! But many are exploitative babysitting mills, hoovering up guileless parents’ cash and shoving kids into bleak rooms lit by dim rows of fluourescent bulbs being taught by an underpaid foreign teacher (who may not even be in the country legally and so is unable to complain to the government about poor treatment).

Hagwons, to my mind, illustrate a potential failure of private school choice, which I otherwise support. Parents find it very difficult to judge quality, and besides are often unable to afford better even if they know it’s not the most ideal circumstance for their kids. But they feel they have no choice, because if they pull little Kim Hwang-Ju out, how will he ever get into a good high school? And if he fails to get into a good high school, what chance does he have at university? You’d basically be throwing his life prospects into the fireplace if you did that. There’s an aching, roaring demand for private tutoring in this country, anything at all to give your kids a leg up on those bastards’ devilspawn next door, and hagwons are a parastic entity come to fill the void. Some may be legitimate, run by scrupulous employers and offering quality education – maybe even a majority! But there’s also plenty of profiteers out to grift parents.

Anyway, kids outside the gifted high school may go home at night, but it’s just long enough for dinner or so. Then it’s off to the hagwon, where they will stay until 10:00. It used to be later, but the government cracked down and installed a curfew on students – with the result that many underground late-night hagwons exist.

The point of all this is that Korean education is a relentless, ruthless, remorseless grind. Students are under tremendous pressure from their families, their peers, and all of society to succeed, with total shame being visited on any who fail to keep up. The school system has developed into an authoritarian monster bent on packing every last moment of the students’ day with more study! More education! More knowledge! With the entire focus bent on a few standardized tests – not tests mandated by the government, mind, but by the universities. You have to pass a difficult entrance exam to get into a good high school. And a good high school which focuses single-mindedly on preparing students for the single national college entrance exam is the only way you have prayer of making it through the brutally competitive college admissions process.

It’s important to note that the Korean government is aware of many of these problems, and President Moon Jae-In’s administration is working to correct them (making high school admission more equitable, trying to find jobs for college graduates, trying to improve students’ life satisfaction so they stop killing themselves, fighting the hagwons). But everyone here knows how difficult it is for a government to fight cultural inertia, and Korea’s educational system is not the result so much of deliberate government design as it is the natural consequence of a set of cultural imperatives. So, President Moon’s efforts have not met with universal success.

So yes, Korean students get good test scores. With all this, it’d be completely astonishing if they failed to be one of the top nations in the world when it comes to test scores. But I am increasingly left with the feeling that that’s all they have: test scores. And what good are test scores, in and of themselves? Tests are only good insofar as they measure something real, and to my mind the only real thing Korean national tests measure is students’ ability to optimize for the tests. Are Koreans more innovative than the rest of the world? Do the best Koreans outcompete the best Americans, or the best Germans, or the best Israelis, when it comes to scientific breakthroughs, to new tech start-ups, to powering the innovative and creative information economy of the future? I’m not so sure.

The Korean economy, which rapidly grew from the 1980’s, has been slowing down in recent years. Korea’s unemployment rate among college graduates is extremely high. With virtually every young person pursuing a degree, naturally degrees have become devalued by many companies. Perversely, the ferocious competition to get into college to get a good job has resulted in getting into college no longer guaranteeing a good job. Observers have noted that Korea’s students often seem narrowly focused, have difficulties taking initiative, and lack the flexibility needed for the modern economy. At the same time, vocational training is way down (much as in the US) and many “blue collar” jobs go unfilled here because of the extreme social stigma from not getting a college degree (and consequentially being overqualified to be a “mere” plumber or electrician).

I don’t want to say that the Korean education system is a failure. It’s not. Korea has one of the highest rates of literacy in the world and one of the highest rates of tertiary education in the world. Korea has grown from abject dirt poverty in 1953 to one of the 10 largest economies in the world today, while stuck on a tiny, resource-poor peninsula wedged between the devil and the deep blue sea (the People’s Republic of China and Korea’s hereditary enemy, Japan). Many great and popular brands are Korean – Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia – and Seoul is one of the greatest cities in the world. The Koreans are probably the best-educated national group in the world and they have a lot to be proud of. But that success comes at a high price. And in my opinion, having worked in it, is that their system is one that is neither capable nor desirable of being emulated elsewhere.

Tl;dr: Yes, Korea has great test scores, but don’t read too much into that.

*I really have come around to calling it Korea instead of South Korea. It’s one nation that’s presently in a state of civil war, and has been for the last 70 years. Both governments claim sovereignty over the whole peninsula, so it’s not like there’s an official North Korea and South Korea. There’s one Korea, and which government is the legitimate one is, well, open to disputation. Personally, I back the regime that’s not a murderous Communist dictatorship.

The sun was so low that it was almost hidden behind the flank of the mountain as I staggered down the trail. Only a scant few rays slithered between the trees, leaving most of the path down in shadow. Tricky footing, but I had to hurry, since I wanted to make it to the bottom and get back to town before dark.

But it was hard going.

I was probably overexerting myself on this one. It was early Saturday evening. I had spent most of the day at rehearsal – which, of course, any theater geek can tell you is draining by itself – then had come out here before dinner. I had a few hours of daylight left – about 4 – which seemed like enough, if I pushed myself, to accomplish my task.

I had come to Mudeungsan intent on finding the top, but the intricate network of trails (all marked mostly in Korean) had defeated me on three consecutive attempts – including this one. I had forged quickly past the ajummas and ajassis in their climbing gear, then hit the stairs and steep, boulder-lined pathways winding up the flank of the mountain. I was quickly blown, but even though I’m a damnfool, I am at the very least a stubborn damnfool, so I kept at it, letting the long legs God saw fit to grace me with eat up the distance, until I reached – well, not the peak, but certainly a peak.

My legs were stiff and weary, I was out of breath, and, again, because I am an idiot, I hadn’t brought enough water. But the light was starting to go and coming down the mountain in the dark was not going to be a pleasant experience, so I resolved to tackle the descent and then recover with some dinner afterwards.

This was likely a mistake.

The shadows were already growing long, and the path was narrow and, perversely, just as steep going down as it had been coming up. Imagine the cheek! My breath came short, my swollen tongue clung to the roof of my mouth, and in general I was not having a good time.

Good view from the top, though.

So it was that, tired, sweaty, and maybe crying just a little bit (although I’ll never admit it if I was), I staggered down the trail and into the courtyard of a small Buddhist temple that lies near the base of the mountain. It was your typical little Korean Buddhist mountain sanctuary: three buildings – barracks, temple, kitchen – arrayed around a central courtyard and a small stone pagoda. A handful of Koreans were walking around the grounds, visiting. Most importantly, though, I saw a small stone bench next to the main temple. Eternally grateful for the great, I stumbled over to it and sank down.

While I sat there and just sort of panted and concentrated on continuing to exist for a bit, a middle-aged Korean man with a shaved head and the simple blue habit of a monk emerged from the kitchen and glanced over at me for a moment before vanishing back inside. I dully watched him go, too drained to really be curious.

A few minutes later, he emerged again and walked over to me. In his hands were two steaming mugs. Without a word, he sat down on the bench next to me and handed over one of the mugs. The steam carried the scents of mint and other herbs from the tea to my nostrils. I held the mug up to him in acknowledgement, then sipped.

For fifteen minutes we sat there, we two, with our tea, watching the world go by. The sun got a bit lower. The evening breeze got a bit cooler. The crowd got a bit thinner. And my spirits a bit stronger.

Then the tea was done, and so was the moment. I stood up, nodded farewell, and stepped off back to the mountain and the rest of the world.

Neither one of us ever said a word to each other in the whole encounter.

But I think we communicated just fine.

“Heeeeeey! English! Over here! Hellooooo!”

I paused in the middle of the stream of people and glanced around. Scores of Koreans in their best mountain gear flowed around me – mostly middle-aged and elderly men and women, clad in sleek climbing gear, visors, hats, and gloves, in many cases masks, too, so that only a few inches of skin peaked out around their eyes – Koreans greatly fear the sun and go to extreme lengths to avoid exposing themselves to it. True story. They all were heavily equipped in backpacks, water bottles, and walking sticks, looking more suited to an expedition scaling the Matterhorn than an afternoon’s hike on Mudeungsan.

Except, that is, for one man.

He was short, bald, and round – in fact, his whole body from his little bald head down to his expansive waste seemed to be mostly a series of spheres. His head was round, and bare, only a few wispy strands of once-black hair laying limply across the crown. Little black eyes, glittering with humor and good cheer, squinted out from beneath heavy brows, framed by his ears which stuck out just a bit from his head. His cheeks, naturally, were round and seemingly perpetually stuck in laughter. A pair of chins hung over his body, which, again, resembled nothing so much as a globe.

Actually, he looked like one of those classic laughing Buddha statues, come to life and now wandering around Mudeungsan ambushing foreign travelers.

He wore the same track suit that other Koreans did for exercise, but that was about the only way he resembled them. Most Koreans are stern and grave in public, especially seniors. This man was – well, the only way to describe him was jolly.

He came bouncing up to me, seeming amused as hell to see me on the mountain. “You English? Yeah? English?”

I nodded. “Yep. I speak English.”

“Oh! Good! Where from, where from?”

“America – Missouri, if you know where that is.”

“You guess where I from! How my English? I practice with you! You guess where I from!” The man’s words came out in a mad rush, as if each was eager to be the first to reach my ears, so that they were tripping over each other and getting in each other’s way, all kind of just stumbling in at once.

I looked him over. I mean, he looked Korean, more or less – a bit rounder than most, a lot happier than most. But if he was Korean, why would he ask me to guess?

“You’re not Korean?”

“Nope! Guess again!” He grinned widely at me (well, more widely).

Well, he’s obviously Asian, so let’s play balance of probabilities here.

“Then you must be Chinese?”

“Yes! Good! Good! You good guesser!” He doubled over, laughing. “How my English?”

“Not bad,” I said, not untruthfully I felt. But he insisted I was a liar, and that his English was horrible, but he wanted to practice.

The laughing round man and I stood for perhaps 20 minutes there, on the path up the mountain, while the crowds flowed around us. Our conversation – interrupted by his frequent bouts of hilarity – was generally sufficient for me to learn this:

1)His name was Kim Cheong-wan.
2)”I bet you didn’t expect me to have Korean name!”
3)Turns out he was born to Korean parents in northern China – Dalian, to be precise, the former Mukden/Port Arthur during the days of Russian and Japanese domination.
4)His parents had met after the war – mom was from the North, dad from the South, but due to the war neither one of them could go home. So they made a life in China.
5)Cheong-wan loved to travel, loved to learn new languages.
6)Did I speak Chinese?
7)Wow, my Chinese was very good!*
8)Cheong-wan’s English, despite my insistence, was terrible.
9)”You tell me I make mistake! You tell me, yes?”
10)Of course I would tell him.

He had lived in China most of his life, but had moved to Gwangju to retire about a decade before, living near his father’s family. He liked to come out and hike every day – important to stay healthy, you know? He also liked meeting new people (I hadn’t noticed), especially foreigners (so he could practice his English).

Eventually, we parted, me headed up, him headed down, to the bus stop. I summited, scrambled down the mountain (not without difficulty – a story for tomorrow, perhaps), and staggered into the bus stop a good two hours later. I found a handy bench to wait for the next 09 bus to take me home, when a hand fell on my shoulder.

“Heeeeeeey! American! Remember me!?” How could I forget? Our reunion prompted renewed hilarity from Cheong-wan. His bus was late, so he was having to hang around the bus stop. He didn’t seem to particularly mind, as he wandered from person to person and chatted animatedly with everyone.

His English was – well, not great. Neither was my Korean. But nevertheless, we talked for perhaps an hour there, waiting for the bus. And at the end of it, I think I had made another friend. All because he wanted to practice his English.

In other words – sometimes the language barrier is no barrier at all to communication. Instead, it promotes it.

Glad to know you, Kim Cheong-wan.

*My Chinese is not very good. I got out “ni hao” and “xie xie” and a handful of other basic phrases.