“As for you, number 4, you have a wonderful voice. Have you ever thought about doing radio?”
Sixteen-year old me hadn’t. In fact, I hated the sound of my own voice (news to anyone who’s heard me expand on my favorite subjects, but there’s a difference: I don’t enjoy talking just to talk. I love warships and history and religion and philosophy and so I love talking about those things, but it’s the subject I love, not the talking). Like most people, I couldn’t stand to listen to recordings of myself. So when the debate judge mentioned radio to me, it was the first time I”d ever thought about the subject.
I lost the debate, of course. I lost most debates – I simply wasn’t good at convincing people through the absurd and convoluted rules that American policy debate requires (I’m not bitter). I was a good speaker, though – in fact, I was the best in the district at the extemporaneous speaking competition, and probably should have performed better at state (I didn’t try my hardest, a fact which my debate teacher knew when she saw my final scores but didn’t call me on. I was tired of debate and didn’t want to do it next year).
Anyway, after a policy debate the four speakers (two on each team) would be given feedback from the judges, and I was consistently praised for the quality and control of my voice. “You definitely have the face – er, voice – for radio,” I distinctly remember one judge, a well-meaning older man with silver hair and a strong, confident face, saying. The judgment – a face for radio – stuck with me.
But I never did try radio.
Until Saturday, that is. I walked into First Alleyway, a popular expat restaurant in Gwangju. The expat community is pretty small here – it’s like a small village within the large city, about 300 people I’d estimate, give or take. You don’t know everyone, but you know someone who knows just about anyone. So when a new face (like me) shows up, people are naturally curious.
I sat down at the bar for dinner. On the TV, Interstellar was playing. Matthew McConaughey was being battered by massive ocean waves the size of city blocks. The fellow sitting next to me, a portly, bearded man with thinning hair and a friendly face, leaned over and said, “I saw this in the Imax here in town. Those waves on an Imax screen? I thought I was gonna die!” Thus I met Arlo.
Arlo is an Albertan, but fled to Korea a decade ago as a political refugee – a democratic socialist had no place in conservative Alberta. Initially an English teacher, he had gotten his master’s in Economics and now taught at Chonnam University, with a Korean wife and child. As a side hustle, though, he hosted People of Gwangju, an English-language radio program on the local expat radio network. When I mentioned that I taught at Gwangju Science Academy, he perked up. “Well, Brad, you’ve passed the barrier of being sufficiently interested. How would you feel about an interview? I’d make it worth your while.”
So it was that this Friday (about two hours ago) I made m shining radio debut.
I drove out to the station (and by that I mean I took a cab – I don’t miss driving one bit), which sits on a leafy hill overlooking downtown Gwangju. Behind the building a radio antenna leaps into the sky, one of the highest points in the city. I walked inside, past signs reminding me that ALL GUESTS MUST USE HAND SANITIZER BEFORE ENTERING STUDIO, and signed the guestbook (Please write your temperature. Did you bring a mask? Y/N), before being ushered into the studio.
THe production offices were, well, normal, apart from everyone wearing surgical masks (itself never too uncommon in Korea, admittedly). Cubicles and employees at computers, editing, writing, doing the administrative minutia that keeps every operation in, er, operation. Arlo met me, shook my hand (a bold choice in these times of COVID19) and ushered me into the studio. A desk with a pair of microphones and headphones for each of us, the soundproof glass barrier separating us from the production crew (Missy, his producer, studied at UMKC! We shared a mutual joy over the Chiefs’ glory before beginning) – it was a real radio studio!
The interview itself was super easy, barely an inconvenience. I talked about myself, mostly (my favorite subject of all!), coming to Korea, surprises, difficulties. I wish the story were more interesting, but honestly I was just excited to be there. It’s fun to be on the radio! After a brief conversation – barely twenty minutes, which I was told would of course be editted down, I was being thanked for my time and shown the door.
So nothing glorious or glamorous, but still fun. One more thing off the bucket list – appear (what’s the proper word for non-visual media?) on the radio at least once in my life. Between this interview for the English language radio station in a town with perhaps 300 native English speakers, and one of my Tweets getting more than a hundred likes, I’m basically a celebrity now. You can all say you knew me before I got famous, though, so there’s that.
I’m still trying to grapple with Japan and put everything into words. Not really for y’all – to be honest, who wants to read about someone else’s vacation? It’s the dreaded Slideshow, after all. No, this is for me. The better I can write everything down, the better I can remember it and keep it forever. But there’s so much, I’m having a hard time.
This is something I wrote for another place. After I finished, I thought it might also be appreciated here, as sort of a glimpse as to what I’m dealing with:
You asked me how Japan was. I will attempt to answer: Japan was…everything I wanted it to be and more. It’s impossible to fully describe my trip, so let me instead describe one moment for y’all and let it stand for all:
So I bought a JR Rail Pass, which for two weeks grants me unlimited rides on essentially the entire Japanese rail network, from the mighty shinkansen bullet train all the way down to little municipal trains that roam around rural provinces. I could go wherever I wanted, when I wanted, which I used to the fullest extent, exploring the whole length of the country between Hakata port and Tokyo.
By Wednesday, I’ve been in the country nearly a week, and I’m on the shinkansen. It’s an intimidating thing, when I first tried it – the shinkansen station in every city is massive, with tens of thousands of people hurrying everywhere, a hundred different shops packed in, video advertisements, posters, signs pointing to trains every which way – for a Midwestern boy like me it was all a bit overwhelming. When you reach the platform, the roar of trains coming and going is constant, and the air is filled with announcements in Japanese and English, and people talking to each, too, so it’s an intense experience. Then the train comes barrelling down into the station and between the noise and the speed of it you can just feel the power of this machine. I loved it. But once you board the shinkansen, things change totally – the ride is smooth, the cars are spacious, luxurious, and quiet. The seats are wide and soft, smiling women roam up and down the aisle with drink and snack carts, and unless you look out the window you can hardl tell you’re moving at all.
So I’m snug in my seat Wednesday afternoon, racing towards evening. Behind me is Kyushu, Hiroshima, Himeji, Osaka, Kyoto – but yet to come is Tokyo. I’m tired from everything I’ve already done – a hundred adventures already – but I’m also excited for my first glimpse of Tokyo, the largest city in the world. Still ready to see some of those iconic Japanese sights like the scramble crossing or Tokyo tower. And the train comes around a bend, and my jaw just drops – in the distance, glowing in the sunset, dozens of miles across a wide valley, I get my first glimpse of Mt. Fuji.
Now, I’ve heard of Mt. Fuji, of course, and seen the pictures. I thought I was prepared for it. Fellas, let me tell you – I was not prepared. The snow on the volcano flared golden in the sunlight. Clouds skirted along its foothills. The intervening valley between us lay mostly in shadow, except for the lights of Fuji town, just now starting to twinkle in the advancing evening. I just kind of stared, slack-jawed for a while, then dove for my phone – the train is racing along at hundreds of miles an hour and I have bare minutes. It’s not the greatest photo in the world, but it’s all I had time for:
Now that is a natural wonder of the world.
My trip was filled with moments like that. I drank sake with a dozen strangers on our hotel roof for Chinese New Year. Didn’t learn their names – no one shared and no one asked. Waded in the tide at Itsukushima Shrine. Got kidnapped by some elderly women in Hiroshima and dragged to a traditional tea ceremony. Toured the Imperial Palace. Met American contractors in a tiny dongatsu joint in Osaka, who were building animatronic robots for a theme park (one guy did Gringotts, in Orlando!). Chased by wild boars at Fushimi Shrine in Kyoto. Had my best gin and tonic ever in the shadow of Tokyo Tower.
Have you ever had a perfect day? A day where you would change absolutely nothing, because even the smallest alteration would mar the rest? Picture a string of days like that – every day in succession was more perfect than the last. That was Japan.
So, Japan was spectacular. In fact, it was the best trip of my life. I took so many pictures and had hundreds of adventures in those 7 days. I’ve been trying to put together some kind of narrative of my trip, but it’s proving difficult for a number of reasons:
First, the trip itself was meaningful to me because of a lot of context, without which you cannot really appreciate why it mattered so much. As Dickens put it, the context “must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Sharing that context without being overly verbose (me? overly verbose? Never!) is a challenge.
I don’t want it just to become a vacation slideshow. Those are super boring. No one wants to read a slideshow.
The Super Bowl was extremely distracting. I spent probably a solid week mostly consuming Chiefs content instead of doing work.
This week, school was meant to start, and I’ve been scrambling to prepare for the semester. Instead, Korea delayed school for two weeks due to the coronavirus.
So, that’s in the works, but it’s tough. Other things I want to work on:
I’m working on a good English-language account of the Gwangju Uprising, since it seems to be almost unknown in the United States and finding good resources in a language I can read is tough. So I’ll make my own. That needs to be done by May 18, so I have time.
A follow up to my Family posts to bring the story of the Chiefs’ playoff run to its exciting end.
Life in Korea under the threat of COVID-19. I’m not dead, and I don’t anticipate dying from this bug (-knock on wood-), but people may be interested in what life is like here at this time.
Maaaaaybe if I can persuade my friends a few portraits of them and my shared experiences with them on here. But some of them read this so I have to promise to be kind and only write flattering things (I’m pretty sure I do this anyway).
So yeah. Not dead. Good to write publicly what I want to tackle, since it forces me to deliver later.
The Chiefs have always been Kansas City’s first love. The city has been devotedly loyal to the team even through 25 years of playoff failure, even though it’s 50 years this month since the team was last even in the Super Bowl. No matter to the fans – they’ve kept the faith all this time, even as the team continually let them down.
Two years ago, I remember. Another January evening. Lona and I went out for Mexican food. It was a good meal – I bumped into one of my coworkers at the restaurant, always a joy – and in the background was another Chiefs playoff game. As we filed out, Lona elbowed me and said, “Hey, look! You’re winning!” I glanced over. It was halftime, and the score stood 21-3 in the Chiefs favor. I laughed.
“I’ve seen this movie before,” I said. “There’s a lot of game left. Give ’em time, they’ll let you down.”
By the time we reached home, the game was over, and the Chiefs had lost 22-21, in a game that featured an opposing fumble blown dead because of “forward progress” and the opposing quarterback managed to somehow throw a pass to himself in the end zone. Same old Chiefs. I loved them anyway, because some things are important.
But now…maybe not same old Chiefs.
As the entire world knows by now, watching from the sidelines of that failed playoff game was a young man, a 23-year old out of Texas Tech University who had been drafted by the Chiefs at #10 that year. His dad was a major league baseball player, but Patrick Mahomes II’s first love was always football. A few weeks after the game, the Chiefs traded their veteran quarterback Alex Smith (the man behind the helm for both the 2014 and the 2018 defeats, as well as 2 more in the meantime) and said they were all in with Mahomes as the new starter.
Well, we all know what happened next. That fall, Mahomes took the league by storm. He was the second coming of Favre, Montana, Elway, all rolled into one. He could throw passes on one foot, across his body, with either hand, with his eyes closed. He could throw a football 70 yards and place it in a window 6 inches wide.
For the first time in my life, the Chiefs had the best player in all of football. And while the Royals had won, the one thing that my grandfather would have most wanted to see – the one thing that everyone wanted to see – was the Chiefs playing the Super Bowl. With Mahomes under center, suddenly that looked like a real possibility.
The Chiefs stormed to the #1 seed in the AFC last year and home field advantage in the playoffs. They hosted Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in a game at Arrowhead for the right to go to the Super Bowl, a titanic game, the largest in the old stadium’s entire history. It was a brutal slugging match, a back-and-forth affair that came down to the final seconds. I remember, as Brady drove down the field, trailing by 4, with less than two minutes to go, he slung a single ill-considered pass – and a Chiefs defender (Charvarius Ward) came up with the ball. An interception!
For one, brief, shining moment, I thought I’d seen what my grandfather had wanted for his whole life. I thought I’d watched the Chiefs just punch their ticket to the big dance.
Of course, we know what happened. Dee Fords was off-sides. The play was nullified, and the Patriots would go on to win in overtime.
It was a gut punch, a sickening blow right in the stomach, but it was one I’d felt before. Because it had happened to us before – in 2014, when the Royals came up 90 feet short. They had come back the next year. Now the Chiefs would have to, too.
The NFL is not an easy league. It’s been a long, tough road. The Chiefs lost a game to the Colts, and to the Texans, games they should have won. New England won the Super Bowl (again) and looked as unstoppable as ever. The Ravens exploded to completely dominate the league. Meanwhile, the Chiefs struggled, Mahomes was injured, and it looked like any prospect of repeating was slipping away. The low point was when the Chiefs went to Tennessee and were beaten in the closing seconds by the lowly Titans.
I’m sorry, Grandpa. Maybe next year.
But sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference.
The Chiefs quietly put things together. They stopped losing. They went to New England and beat Brady’s Patriots. At the time, it seemed to hardly matter – New England still had a 1-game lead for the bye, and the Ravens had locked up the #1 seed long since. The top 2 seeds are almost always the teams competing for a Super Bowl. The Chiefs, as a #3 seed, would have to beat a wild card team, then go to New England and beat the Patriots again, then go to Baltimore and beat the 14-2 Ravens, just to reach the Super Bowl. A tall order. But the Chiefs kept grinding, kept winning.
I’ll never forget the last week of the season. The Chiefs came in, 11-4, needing to beat the Chargers even to have a chance at a bye. The Patriots were 12-3, simply needing to defeat the lowly Dolphins, a team with only 4 wins, who the Patriots had blown out 42-0 in Miami earlier, a team so terrible legitimate articles were written earlier in the season questioning if the team was the worst of all time.
And as the Chiefs closed in, doing their part, beating the Chargers, a miracle happened.
As time wound down in both games, the Dolphins marched down the field – and took the lead with barely 30 seconds to go.
In Arrowhead, the news was kept from the big screen – Reid didn’t want his players distracted. But the crowd knew, and the word spread via word of mouth around the stadium. ANd you can see the roar steadily grow and spread in a natural wave as everyone learns the amazing news. The players learn, too, and react with unfeigned joy: the Chiefs were now the #2 seed. They would have the bye – and the Patriots would have to play a wild card team, and, if they won, come to Arrowhead to play.
And then last week. The Patriots, and then the Ravens, were upset. The two teams the Chiefs were chasing all season – eliminated. And for the second straight year, the AFC Championship Game will be held at Arrowhead.
Wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
And so it comes to the Titans.
It had to be the Titans. The last team to beat the Chiefs this season. A team the Chiefs have beaten only once in the last five years, and lost to four times. Last year, the Chiefs beat the Colts in the playoffs and got that monkey off their back. The game in Foxborough this year ensured the Patriots were in the wild card and served as fitting revenge for the defeat last January. Now the Chiefs face a tough, physical team that isn’t the least bit frightened of them.
The team the Chiefs lost to, the last time I doubted them, 22-21?
The Titans, of course.
But they’re back. Against all odds, the Chiefs have clawed their way to a second chance. A second chance to give me the thing I’ve wanted for Grandpa for years. A chance at a Super Bowl. And so the game on Sunday means everything to me.
But not whether they win or lose. I want htem to win, obviously, but ultimately the winning or losing isn’t what’s important. What is important is that you’re there, with your team. Because when you cheer for the team, you’re not alone. You’re sharing the experience with millions of people from around your city. You’re coming together and joining in something larger than yourself, something you choose to devote yourself to. Not because they just happen to live nearby. But because the people you care about also choose to. And when you’re cheering on your team, the ones you love – including the ones you lost – aren’t really gone. For just a few hours, once a week, they’re right there with you, again.
Because ultimately, you cheer for your team because of your family.
Six years ago this month, I had one of the most intense arguments I’ve ever had with my family. Tempers flared, things got heated, and for a while we even had to separate just so everyone could cool down – maybe common, in other houses, but definitely a rarity with me and mine.
The Cape Coral riverfront at night
It was January, 2014. We were in Florida for Christmas and New Year’s. We’d gone across the bridge over the Caloosahatchee River to Cape Coral, to a restaurant Mom had wanted to try there near the riverfront. It was a crowded place, and the NFL playoffs were on. My hometown Kansas City Chiefs had made the playoffs for the first time under their new head coach, Andy Reid, and had traveled to Indianapolis to take on Andrew Luck’s Colts. Everyone in my family was deeply invested in the game – except me. And here the troubles began.
“It’s stupid,” I said, “to invest so much of your happiness in a team like the Chiefs.” I went on, “You don’t know any of the players. They’re a bunch of people you’ve never met, people who aren’t even from Kansas City. Their winning or losing affects your daily life not a bit. And if they win, it’s no credit to you – you did nothing.”
My mother was horrified. “It’s not about the winning and losing,” she said. “It’s about supporting your hometown team!”
I shook my head. “They have no connection to Kansas City! Most of the players, again, aren’t even from Kansas City. They’re basically just hired mercenaries. Basically, they’re just a bunch of people who happen to play geographically near me. I have no connection to them.”
Back and forth we went, each side steadily digging in, and things started to get heated. Meanwhile, on the screen, the Chiefs were thumping the Colts, racing out to a 38-10 lead over the luckless* Indianapolis team.
My position was simple. I refused to get invested, emotionally, in Kansas City’s two professional teams, the Royals and the Chiefs, because they would always disappoint me in the end. The Royals, of course, were the perennial laughingstock of baseball, having had only 1 winning season in the last 20 years and not having sniffed the playoffs since 4 years before my own birth.
In many ways, though, the Royals’ quiet, hopeless futility was better than what the Chiefs did.
The Chiefs would break your heart.
Many of my earliest memories, especially in the winter time, are of my family – all of them, including grandparents, uncles & aunts, cousins – gathered in the living room on Sundays to watch the Chiefs in the playoffs. The red and white sweaters would come out, snacks would be made, and then a lot of yelling and tears would inevitably ensue.
See, unlike the Royals, the Chiefs consistently made the playoffs. They were a consistently tough, well-performing team – in the regular season. In the playoffs, they preferred to implode dramatically.
In 1996, I was 6 years old. I had just started kindergarten at Prairie View Elementary, two years after we had moved to Lee’s Summit, a small but quickly growing suburb of Kansas City. The top-seeded Chiefs lost to a wild card Colts team 10-7 after Lin Elliot missed 3 field goals in the same game.
In 1998, I was 8. My parents were splitting up, Clinton was being impeached, and the Chiefs were in the playoffs against the hated Denver Broncos, again the top seed against a wild card team. This time they lost, 14-10, after more missed field goals, after a touchdown was ruled out of bounds despite replay showing Gonzales clearly in (instant replay review was instituted the next season).
In 2004, I was 14, by now at Lee’s Summit West High School. I had a baby sister and two new stepparents since the last time the Chiefs made the playoffs. But they were back, and hosting the Colts again. The monstrous Chiefs offense didn’t have a single punt the entire game and scored 31 points. Unfortunately, the Colts under a young Peyton Manning also never punted and scored 38.
And so it went.
In 2007, they lost to the Colts again. In 2011 they lost to the Ravens. In between these brief flashes of hoped-for success were long stretches of irrelevant mediocrity or outright failure (as in 2008). And along the way, I slowly drifted away from caring about the Chiefs or the Royals. That way would only bring disappointment and pain, I learned. I graduated high school, I went to college, I fell in love with a girl from St. Louis (and watched her hometown Cardinals go to the World Series, twice, and win it once), I changed my intended career, I started grad school, and all along I knew that sports was a foolish waste of time.
I don’t remember what we ate, that January night in Florida. I just remember the argument, the rising tempers on both sides, and behind us, the Chiefs actually playing well in the playoffs for once. I simply couldn’t understand why anyone would want to invest themselves in the team, and I was irritated that I was being attacked for doing what I considered to be the smart choice. On the other side, Mom was hurt that I was attacking her fandom, and frustrated that I didn’t seem to understand why the Chiefs were important to her.
I think of that argument today, because I was wrong. It is important to support your teams. They do give something valuable. And they’re not just a bunch of strangers – no, not at all. There is a connection, and it’s important.
I’ve told this story before, but it’s one that merits multiple tellings. That January, 2014, was probably the low point of Kansas City fandom. The Royals’ drought entered its 29th year. The Chiefs’ inability to win in the playoffs entered its third decade. And since then, everything has changed.
As you know, the Royals won the wild card, a wild, improbable, come from behind win, a moment of redemption for a franchise that had been nothing more than a speed bump for thirty years, the guys to play the patsies in other team’s highlight reels.
But Papa, the biggest Royals and Chiefs fan in the world, didn’t get to see it. He passed away from complications from heart surgery at the same time the Royals’ crazy playoff run began.
I’ll never forget that fall. I was home, for the first time in years, after so much time spent in college and grad school. My whole family gathered for the funeral, to say farewell to maybe the best man I ever knew. And what a sendoff he had.
The atmosphere in Kansas City was like nothing else I’ve ever experienced before. The Royals were playing the best team in baseball, the Angels. And suddenly, in 11 innings – they’d taken a game. Then, in 10 innings – another game. And now they’re only one game away from advancing to the next round, one game that they have three chances to win. And people started to talk about how far they could go, and even started to think something once unthinkable: that we could see the Royals – the Royals – in the World Series. And every person in the street had a Royals thought, or wore a Royals hat, or asked a Royals question.
A sea of blue
I wasn’t a Royals fan, not at that time, but when I came home, the city enveloped me. Everyone was a part of the Royals kingdom. Everyone was united, like the old city had never been before, everyone sharing in one experience of joy, excitement, dread, and exhilaration, every night, as the Royals hurled themselves at the tallest mountain in sports: the World Series.
Every evening, I’d come together with my family, and though we still mourned our loss, and it hurt, deeply, to think about Papa’s absence, when the game was on, it didn’t hurt so much. He would have been overjoyed with everything happening. He would have shared in the city’s united exuberance more than anyone. Watching the games, I knew that. And so when I watched the Royals, just for a few hours every evening, it was like I still had my grandfather. And suddenly I got it.
Now, the Royals fell short that fall, 90 feet short, thanks to Madison Bumgarner, but the next year they clawed their way back and won the whole damn thing, a feat no other team has managed to pull off since. It’s a long, long story, worthy of a book of its own**, but the Royals rewarded my faith beyond all belief. And since those fall days, I have faithfully followed my Kansas City teams, because those teams are important to me.
When I cheer for a team, I remember that feeling of unity. I remember everyone in Kansas City, coming together to support their team. And I remember how it helped me salve the hurt of losing my grandfather. When I support the team, it’s because I know he supported them, and it’s in his memory. It’s not about me, and it’s not about Kansas City. Not really. It’s about Papa. And Mom***. And my aunt Traci. And my dad, and my brother, my friend…It’s about being part of something larger than myself, and sharing in something that I know is important to the people I care about.
So that’s why I support my hometown teams. That’s why I went from someone who hated sports to someone who loves to watch the games, to follow the competition. That’s why I like to wear my Royals cap here, or my Chiefs jacket. Because it’s not for me. It’s for Papa. And for Mom. And my father, and my brother, and my cousins, and uncles, and aunts, and my old friends in Kansas City. When I support the Chiefs, I’m not alone – I’m with my family. And I will always support my family:
This post is long. But it’s not done. There will be part 2, tomorrow.
Because while the Royals reached the top of the mountain, Kansas City’s other team has not.
*ha **A book I’ve sort of already written. I’d like to polish the baseball parts there up and maybe seek publication some day. *** Mom – this also is me admitting I was wrong 6 years ago, and you were right. I’m sorry.
It’s a blank screen. How on Earth do you make a blank screen interesting?
What do you mean, make a blank screen interesting? That’s on you, man! Haven’t you always said that a good writer ought to be able to make writing about a single brick on a brick wall interesting?
That’s different.
How so?
Well, for one, a brick has texture. It has history…
Screens have texture. They have history.
It’s not the same. The point is, I’m staring at the screen here, the stupid cursor keeps blinking and I have no idea what words to put here.
If you don’t know what to write, why bother writing at all?
Because it’s been nearly two weeks and I haven’t written anything, and what I wrote before that wasn’t even about Korea so it hardly counts. I wanted to write every day. Then at least every week. Now even that goal is fading into the rearview mirror. It’s so difficult for me to muster the motivation to do anything these days, it’s hard to write when I have nothing important to write about.
I mean, I think the Christmas post was important.
Important to me, at least. Not sure about anyone else.
If you want to write about Korea, man, then write about Korea. What’s new?
That’s just it. There’s nothing new. I live here. Every day is just…routine at this point.
But it’s routine in Korea! That’s got to count for something, right?
I’m not so sure about that. But fine. Here’s my routine. My alarm rings at 7:00 every day. I stagger up, turn on the hot water, and shower. I silently give thanks every day that I have a real shower and not a freezing wet room like some of my friends have gotten. Then I dress and I’m out the door for work.
A gray winter’s day in Gwangju.
The days are cold, and, if I’m lucky, clear. If I’m not, the fine dust hangs all over the city in a thick haze, and every passerby on the street is wearing a mask. Some days I am, too. Other days a thick, wet mist hangs low over the city, sometimes edging all the way over into a chill rain. I huddle in my coat, turn on my Revolutions podcast, and walk through the streets to work as Mike Duncan’s soothing voice tells me the stories of long-ago wars and the passionate, life-and-death struggles of men and women most of the world has long since forgotten. I pass an old man cleaning the sidewalk, a young woman always hurrying somewhere off to the west, pass a young man who walks too slowly every morning, stop and greet my cat in his little nest under the tree behind the seafood place, wait to cross the street, step in the same pothole again just as I do every morning, and then squeeze through the gate and walk up the front path into the school.
I make my way through the cold* and dim** hallways up to my office on the third floor. I unlock it, turn on the lights, turn on the heat, think for a moment, then turn the heat up a couple of degrees, and walk down to my desk, shrugging off my bag and my coat as I do. I drop into my chair, rest my eyes for a moment, and then log in.
Work will pass by slowly. If I’m lucky, I’ll see perhaps one other human being in the school while I’m here. Everyone else is on vacation. In the meantime, I fill my time by alternating between writing a syllabus and lesson plans for the semester to come, daydreaming about my trip to Japan, and finding long boring things to read on the Internet (did you know that the US State Department has a ton of archives available online? I’ve been reading a lot about the Korean war lately).
The day will pass, the sun will set, the dust and rain will continue to hang, and gradually the hallways outside become even more quiet and more dark. At 4:40, I’ll stand up, stretch, shrug on my coat, and shut off the lights and the heat. I walk home as Duncan tells me of the failed Presidency of Francisco Madero and the rebellion of Victor Huerta who toppled him (“Pity poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!”), back up to my apartment, where I take a few minutes to simply lie on the bed and muster the motivation to do something.
Some days, I’ll cook. Some days, I won’t. I’ll debate trying to write something. Most days, I won’t. I’ll try to read. Some days I’ll actually go to meet someone for dinner. Eventually, night will come, I’ll toss and turn for a while until I sleep, and the next day, I do it again. Those are my days.
See? You wrote a lot! Except…there’s nothing really about you in there, is there? Where’s the joy, the excitement that you had earlier in the year?
…no, no I don’t think I’m ready to share about that, yet. Suffice to say that life is harder than it was four months ago, and I have so much more sympathy for people with depression. I’ll get back to myself again. I’ll have energy, and the motivation to do things. I’ll have confidence in myself, and I’ll be happy with myself. Hell, it’s possible that this is jut my suspected seasonal affective disorder – always mildly present – just gone into overdrive because I’m away from home, I’m grappling with the failure of my relationship, and I’m isolated from everything I’ve ever known before. As time passes and the air grows warmer and the days grow longer I’ll bounce back.
Sometime.
But not yet.
Until then, I’m just going to stare at this stupid blinking cursor and try to figure out what to do to make it go away.
*”I like the cold. Nips the bones. Keeps the heart from overheating.” – Ebenezer Scrooge **”I like the dark. Darkness is cheap – and that is tonic to the sensible man.” – Also Ebenezer Scrooge
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.
I really should know who did this painting originally. It’s used so often.
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.
all this from a tiny seed
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.
Why not do this all the year?
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!
A Muslim man gave Christmas gifts to the needy in his town.
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.
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.
pictured: a greater 20th century German mistake
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.
*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
A quick overview of Korea’s school system
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.
——-
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.
Confucianism emphasizes order and hierarchy, with respect flowing up from subordinates to superiors. Elders and teachers are especially respected.
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.
No, I don’t know what “We are 1st Grade” exactly teaches.
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!
The college entrance exam is taken so seriously that airplanes are diverted from over the country to avoid disturbing the students.
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.
The front of my school.
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.
A typical day of classes.
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.
Afterschool study in a hagwon
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.
President Moon Jae-In with one of his Cabinet members – who is embroiled in a scandal over his daughter’s academic fraud. Education is a constant national issue here.
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).
Korea’s youth unemployment has consistently been twice the national average.
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.
Images like this are what made me first look into my student’s schedule. I see this every day.
*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.
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Gwangju Dreaming 