While some of my students were scratching their heads and trying to solve a puzzle I'd handed out, I stood idly by at one point, and then began to flip through the pages of a textbook on one of the desks. A book they use in some other class.
Look at these roles plays:
Chapter 3
Bradley: Dad, I think they're really in touble. Dad?
Mimi,Sincerity: Arghh!
Mimi: Oh no! Dead Man's Island.
Mimi, Sincerity: Oh no! Oh no!
Marv: Hold on Mimi!
Mimi, Sincerity: Arghh!
Marv: Don't worry, kids. I've got you.
Bradley: Mimi! You're okay.
Do I need to say anything about that? I'm not sure about you but I don't think I have ever met someone with the name Sincerity.
I also doubt that it is necessary to reinforce a word, sorry, a sound, like 'arghh'.
Arguably the only thing they'll learn in this example is what 'hold on' means. But even the meaning of that isn't clear. Is it to hold on to something, or to be courageous and not give in to panic. But wait, it gets worse.
Chapter 6
Mimi: She's telling the truth.
Jubilee: See? They're all ill-mannered cretins. Fire him.
Lance: Sorry Marv, but she has a point.
Okay, now excusing the fact that is just seems like a fruit basket of hogwash, when do children ever need to use a word like 'cretins' or why would being 'fired' be relevant to them? And have you ever met anyone called Jubilee? At the level these children are, why are they being taught 'ill-mannered' - which is really two opposing words, instead of 'rude' or 'impolite'?
Chapter 7
Marv: Well, fire me if you must, but I'm the only one who knows the secret password to the annual report.
Lance: He has a point too, Dumpling.
Marv: And while we're at it, Lance.
I've been meaning to ask for a raise.
Jubilee: Grr!
Mimi: So there, Sincerity!
Sincerity?
How'd you like to have dinner with my family tonight.
Nonsense. That's all it is. I wonder who actually wrote this. Someone who got the very dangerous idea that they could contribute to children's education by writing a children's book. Possibly a recently fired accountant? What child in the world is going to get enthusasitic about a secret password to an annual report?
Chapter 8
Saffron: Anyone for another tofu dog?
Sincerity: No thank you, Mrs Morton.
Does she always make you eat compost?
Lance: Lobster tails anyone?
Sincerity: Lobster tails?
Well, it's been real, maybe too real. See ya!
Mimi: Jason? They're offering lobster tails next door.
Jason: Nah.
Why go for a lobster tail when I can have a whole tofu dog right here?
The chapters aren't even coherent in terms of each other. New characters jump up out of the blue. Is it any wonder this country, the 11th largest economy in the world, produces an overall population that can't speak English nearly as well as the populations of much poorer countries like Thailand and the Philippines. I've been to both countries and the average person can make fairly decent conversation, and these people aren't educated a fraction as much as the Koreans are.
I have an idea the hagwon's, the private school's, intentionally want to provide an education that never really sets the educated person free of it. That would explain why so little of what most people consider 'educational' actually happens in a hagwon.
Children in hagwons throughouyt Korea are given pass marks even when they clearly haven't made the grade. They are put in classes because of parents wishes and expectations, not because of actual ability. They're given books that are useless, but these books can't be changed because the hagwon's have made deals with thei writer's and it's a moneymaking scam. The last thing anyone seems to be thinking is, "How can we effectively teach English."
They make money out of students who keep coming back, needing more and more education. Here in Korea, it's normal to have extra tuition from kindergarten to university level. And on holidays, extra classes. 99% of that time appears, to me, to be a waste of time, because it is so ineefective. Because materials like the above are being passed off as educational.
Is this just a bad book? This book has the school's company logo on it. It's a prescribed GnB book. It's part of their system. Is there anyone, anywhere, who can go, "Ummm, you're teaching this? You shouldn't be teaching this because this is just junk."
So maybe it's sort of an enslaving, addictive type of system. I hope that's true. Because if the person who wrote books like this, and the school's who chose them, the teacher's who teach from them, if they really thought they had any merit, I would have to wonder whether IQ's suddenly starting running backwards, into double digits.
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