DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

Teach for America

dagseoul:

A scam that allows public schools to justify firing experienced teachers to replace them with cheap, inexperienced teachers-in-training. Or, a money-saving program at the expense of rural and poor students.

And now TFA participants are being encouraged to use TFA as a resume builder for exclusive MBA and Law schools, as well as a boost for a possible lucrative future in corporate and political America. So much for finding dedicated teachers.

File under: how privileged students profit from public education’s failures.

dagNotes: A little bit on how I see privilege and white power working, even in Korea

dagseoul:

In my last post, I talked about the problem with white people coming to Korea and suddenly becoming conscious of race. Except, they don’t see white power and privilege, which is everywhere on display. They see racist Koreans.

Then, I received an anonymous ask shouting at me for being white and calling out white supremacists and racism. An obvious troll, but one who provides me with an opportunity to discuss why white people experiencing racism like the young woman in the former post are so misinformed.

I’m white. I argue I have a responsibility to betray my inherited privilege and unearned ambition. And not for any reward either. Simply because I, like everyone else, have an ethical obligation to fight the white power structure that constructs individuals as white subjects. Whiteness is constructed and protected and inherited. I may be able to benefit most from this racist ideological apparatus that shapes capitalist society, but I should reject it. It’s a moral obligation, in my opinion.

And as some folks are claiming, I’m not doing this to point the finger at white privilege. I’m actually trying to examine how it works for myself and in my life, and I’m writing about it. DagSeoul isn’t a “white people are privileged” blog. So, please stop sending me stupid shit in my ask-box about that.

***

I don’t go around claiming I’ve experienced racism in the manner most white people do. Most talk about angry black people, hateful hispanics, crazy Koreans—jealous others whose envy for power causes them to hate their whiteness so much that they act in a racist manner. Of course, that’s utter nonsense. It’s bullshit. That’s not racism. Yelling at whiteness, hating whiteness, having a problem with white people isn’t always racist. It’s a sign of white power. It’s a response to white supremacy.

I play football almost every Saturday in Korea. I live in a Korean neighborhood, so all my teammates are Koreans. They’re all men. They’re almost all younger than me. I’m bigger than all of them. Stronger. I’m not the most skilled footballer, but I’ve played since 1978. I’ve got skill. I can score. I’m fast. I know and love the game. And, I can run all day. When a bald (I shave my head) and bearded white guy is booking down the field with the ball, it’s intimidating. A lot of Korean guys are super-fit and strong, but smaller than me. When I run into them at full speed, I feel it, but they really feel it. And I play a much more physical style of football than Koreans do. Fans of the game will understand this. Most guys love it when I show up with my Korean teammates to play. They talk to me on the field. It’s fun. But it’s not always fun.

When I first arrived, a colleague took me around to meet various clubs in the area. Word got around rather quickly that there was a foreigner who wanted to play and he was good. I got asked to play by my team. I was invited. I considered myself lucky. I really figured I’d have to find foreigners to play with, but I wanted so much to play with Koreans. It’s one of the reasons I was excited about coming here. Anyway, I felt accepted. In a few months, I had twenty-five younger brothers. It was a wonderful feeling.

One of the teams we regularly played often got very mad at my teammates that I was playing so well. It appeared that way to me. I didn’t get it. I’ve since learned that some Korean players think its unfair that they should have to play a foreigner. I’m big and strong and can hurt them. I don’t hurt them, but we’re talking intimidation here. I had so intimidated a couple of players that they couldn’t contain their frustrations any longer. After a day of playing together, they confronted me and my team. We almost had a brawl. My teammates were standing up for me. I was pulling guys away from one another. And one player on the other team yelled, “Yankee, Go home!” Some of us laughed. Some of my teammates wanted to fight. The oldest players stepped in and yelled at everyone. My wife had showed up to watch. She was very upset.

Simple story, right? I play. I play with Koreans. I play well. A little physical, but nothing dirty. I score goals. My team wins a lot. The frustrated players on the other team blame the foreigner for fucking up the peace. One guy says something insulting. Many white people would call it racist. Dude’s a hater. It’s not even racist.

Once, I parked my scooter in front of a cafe and the owner told me to move it somewhere else. She didn’t want it in front of her shop. I told her it was legal. She yelled at me for being a spoiled foreigner. Many white people would call it racist. But. It’s not even racist.

I’ve been involved in pushy moments in the crowded subway where I’ve been yelled at in Korean, called out as a rude foreigner. Many white people would call it racist. But. It’s not even racist.

Koreans who call me out for doing things Koreans often do and explicitly scolding me as a foreigner are often referred to by white people in Korea as racist Koreans. They’re not racists.

White people love to see racism against them. And why not. White power works that way. White people are raised to feel precious and deserving of good treatment. They deserve respect. Why would anybody pick on them because of who they are?

Fact is, there are haters in Korea. The longer I live here, on the other hand, the more I recognize my white privilege is in full effect here. And the rudeness with which I’m treated at times simply requires a little patience and understanding. This might sound patronizing, but it’s not. After all, I was brought here and treated well because of who I am, treated well in a manner that the majority of Koreans will never experience.

I’m often asked, Why would you come to Korea? Koreans talk about their country being no bigger than a booger (우리나라는 코딱지 만큼…)  or no bigger than a palm (우리나라는 손바닥 만큼…). Why would I come to a place most Koreans can’t leave? Well, the answer is because I’m privileged. That’s the answer. The humiliating aspect of that answer is its correlation: I can leave whenever I want to. In other words, I can go home. I have a place to go other than here. I can return. That’s what Koreans see me as sometimes, but especially when they’re annoyed at me. They are confronted with privilege. And they sometimes take it out on me. It’s not racism. Try telling that to many white people in Korea, though.

I’d have to be a real dick to deny this privilege. That guy yelling “Yankee, go home” at me is reaching for something to say at all in the face of my belligerent presence in his life. He was being a dick, but he can’t speak English and he yelled the one insult in English he knew might hurt my feelings. The power he feels that oppresses him in a daily manner is a problem with Korean culture, centuries of oppression. Shit I don’t get. But I’ve added another element. Now he has to play soccer, on his day off, with a white guy who reminds him of a specific and painful lack of privilege and I’m going to knock him down, too. I’d be a dick not to expect some sort of response.

Crass Libertarianism, Liberty, Ideology, Ron Paul fans

dagseoul:

I got sick a couple of weeks ago and forgot that one of my favorite trolls is wishing me mad death and napalmings and such. So, for my new followers, I thought I’d repost some highlights of what got me in trouble with the logical positivists, the Ron Paul fans, and their hysterical apologists. (Any bisexual snark is reserved for Leon.)

I began writing about libertarianism this summer. Somewhere in my archives, you can find me struggling to discuss capitalist libertarianism, trying to come to terms with what to call it. I settled on “crass libertarianism.” About that time, I began being trolled by Ron Paul fans, logical positivists, and anarcho-capitalists. Most of them have given up reblogging my posts because I insisted that if they wanted to talk about capitalism and libertarianism, even positivism, that they’d need to begin referring to the actual theories and theorists, rather than giving me some shit paraphrased from mises.org.

For my new followers, this thinking about crass libertarianism is not all I write about. I’m into critical race theory. I write a lot about whiteness and white supremacy. Also, about pedagogy. I also post about what I’m listening to and a few other things. I love conversation, so always feel free to leave an ask…

1. US Libertarianism is in hate with itself

Libertarianism, from anarcho-capitalism to objectivism, denies social being yet depends on its formation (namely, society,) for its denial, its rhetoric, its discourse. They are the only social political movement I know of that denies itself as part of its ideological representation of reality.

I wrote this earlier on The Weight of Emptiness:

2. Ron Paul, Ideologist

If freedom is “taking your own risks,” then freedom for Paul has nothing to do with the libertarian sacred cow, Liberty. Freedom is being free from others, and nothing more. Liberty becomes a rhetorical object embodying this being with(out) others.

Not only is Ron Paul a capitalist ideologist. He’s an aristocrat with a compulsion to cultivate the traditional white power structure.

I write “ideologist” in combination with the tag “libertarianism is stupid” for many reasons, but each reason rests with(in) the most stupid thing libertarians like Ron Paul discuss: regulation. (I believe this is why he is nothing more than a common Republican.)

If what I’ve illustrated in many posts about Paul, anarcho-capitalism, and American libertarianism is true, that Liberty for libertarians is the ability to be more or less free from others, then this social and political movement, from capitalist anarchists to fascist objectivists, is about nothing less than insuring regulations only exist to compose citizens as free individuals who must be free from others. We could make this ethical and bring in “ought to be”: the libertarian ethos is focused on regulating society to compose citizens as free individuals who should be free from others. And people are more or less free from others dependent upon their status. This is a must because libertarians believe individuals should be status-seeking.

In nature, an individual is never being free-from-others. (This is being as a noun; “free from others” modifies it.) In markets, a consumer is never consuming free from others. In society, a citizen is never living free from others. This free from others is an ideological construction. In other words, it is imaginary. As such, it is a highly regulated representation of reality that relies on ancient and aristocratic notions of the city and citizens. Libertarianism is not to be confused with a new movement that is looking forward in its progressivism, say that’s represented in the current, growing Occupy Movement. It’s the old order of wealthy and privileged elites who wish to define the best we can be via a highly idealized vision of past orders.

I do believe that libertarianism is stupid. Stupid enough to not understand that the core of its own complex ideological structure calls out for a very narrow construction of what is intended to be seen as a free and public discourse community regulated to reflect an ideal version of nature, market and society that has never existed. It’s not that they believe their own representations of reality as the only reality that’s problematic. That’s just common fundamentalism we cope with in free societies and marginalize as anti-intellectual. It’s that they wish to force everyone else to live according to their rules. So much for liberty and freedom.

Anyone who denies social and shared good(s) exist separate from economic good(s), as crass libertarians do, is a very dangerous kind of fundamentalist. Libertarians are tricky because they use the anti-intellectual knee-jerk response to the words “liberty” and “freedom” to offer cover for their elitism. We live in a capitalist market economy that’s ideally free. But what free means in the capitalist free market is free to exchange goods and services. Unfortunately, we also have a money economy. As we all know, the money economy rather unjustly limits freedom in all communities within society to those individuals who have more money than others. Even Adam Smith had to handle this ethical problem of unjust social standing he referred to as unearned ambition.

Libertarians have no ability to cope with the unjust money economy. It’s why they hold equality in contempt. In addition, they conflate the money economy with nature via a constructed term Hayek called the spontaneous social order, and I often call the liberal social order. This is where aristocracy enters via another construction from Greek, the catallaxy. Supposedly, you can’t make enemies into friends without exchanging money for goods and services—in other words, without trade across borders.

A libertarian can’t talk to you about these things. Go ahead and try.

3. Why I hate Ludwig Von Mises

It’s simple. To take Mises’s work on human action seriously, I’d have to first admit that capitalism is natural and that democracy depends on its unregulated function. Second, I’d have to admit that I’m much better described as a consumer than a citizen. Mises’s theory was constructed to justify a society’s use of death and the threat of death for billions who are not US citizens. It’s theory developed to make socialism appear to lead to communism as democracy leads to capitalism. It’s opposed to the concept of a general shared good. It’s constructed to reward unearned ambition and inheritance as a natural right. In other words, it’s constructed to eradicate discussions about equality in human society. In this manner, it’s highly aristocratic.

To contrast capitalism and communism the way Mises and his followers do—that the latter is natural and the former is artificial—is troubling. First and most important, it’s rhetoric. It really doesn’t mean anything to those who don’t believe it. In this manner, it’s a fiction. In my opinion, it illustrates a major flaw with much of the cold war era’s theory about liberty and capitalism. It’s a critical attitude towards humanity that illustrates human being (human action) as the natural recipient of something we created, namely capitalism. Mises struggles, as do other capitalist theorists like Hayek, to find the source of capitalism in human society and as a result of nature. That’s where catallaxy and catallactic come from: the idea that the unregulated exchanging of goods and services peacefully and justly organizes society as the result of a spontaneous social order that results from the unregulated exchange. That’s a fucking fiction. It’s white fiction about the earliest days of organized human society when we are taught we became civilized. (You know, son, that business is the cornerstone of civilization. Trade. Free trade. Without it, civilization would end. Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.)

Capitalism is a highly regulated economic system. To insist it’s part of nature (the liberal social order) is interesting, but suspect. Moreover, it explicitly demonizes a significant aspect of human being, shared good and the impulse to seek it out—in other words, the impulse to address inequality, to organize our lives, our communities, our society. It’s hard to to take seriously a moral system for economic being that constructs a complex and artificial framework for human being that insists we pretend it’s natural while at the same time denigrating the one thing it accepts we naturally seek to do.

It’s hard not to see Mises as a cold warrior. In this manner, he’s a hero to some, I suppose. But to what end? His works hold no answers for growing poverty and corruption. For him, we are all consumers of products produced by entrepreneurs who listen to our wishes. That’s really it, that’s his theory of demand. We want what we buy because what we buy is produced to satisfy what we want by really smart rich guys. That’s fucking insane stuff.

We have the ideal theorist for an idealized capitalist society fueled by white power and white fiction about the wealthy white man and his just inheritance of everything he stole.

4. Crass Libertarian-isms: Liberty

Liberty, for crass libertarians, is a rhetorical tool.

An object.

Liberty reflects what the individual observing it sees as any thing, process, and/or state of being that makes one feel free of obligation, duty and responsibility—these three often being most responsible for citizens’ anxiety and dread in public.

Liberty is a rhetorical tool designed to make one think about freedom while being educated about how to behave in a capitalist market.

Liberty looks like it has roots in a historical tradition of republicanism and democracy and sounds in tune with capitalism. They appear to go hand in hand.

Liberty is, however, a shape-shifting placeholder for one’s desire to be free from others while laboring with them. It justifies one’s own slavery while excusing others’. Liberty, therefore can be seen as a Capitalist’s ideal form of Cooperation.

Liberty reminds people of an idea they think they share. But the idea was constructed to look old, treasured, lost and recoverable. Liberty has been designed by capitalist economists and libertarian theorists to appear just out of reach. If you have not the liberty you want, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough, or because the government is keeping you down.

Liberty is part of the white power tradition in the United States.

———

When listening to a political leader, public official, and/or community organizer using Liberty to organize any effort, think twice before trusting him. (Him is appropriate here. Liberty is part of white masculinity. It’s almost always heterosexist.) They’re working in a tradition of white power, imperialism and capitalist economic theory—theory that justifies unearned poverty, war and slavery of others—that justifies the unearned ambition of the wealthiest members of society. Capitalist Libertarians are always anti-socialist, anti-anarchist. They are statists.

5. On Crass Libertarianism Wealth Redistribution:

When you talk to a capitalist about taxes and government spending, inevitably the capitalist will want to begin speaking about wealth. A common conversation is that we, as in our government acting on behalf of citizens, should be promoting (spending on and investing in) wealth creation not wealth redistribution. Never mind that the claim is unreasonable. Specifically, business owners, entrepreneurs and employers in general do not create wealth. Wealth is a capitalist word that is supposed to be a synonym with value. Wealthy people do not create value. We know how value works, but wealth, you know, is the root in wealthy. So, wealth and the wealthy go together. It’s just common sense. Right? Don’t get pulled into a discussion with such shitty use of common sense and language.

When you hear wealth, you should always insist the conversation returns to labor and value. That’s the most important thing. Capitalists do not want to talk about value. Capitalists want to argue that wealthy people create demand. We know that spending creates demand, but again, capitalists will not want to talk about spending. Capitalists will not want to talk about the fact that money in the hands of the poor is much more stimulative than money in the hands of the rich. Why? Well, for example, capitalist libertarians like to believe that 1$ wealthy people spend is worth more than 1$ poor people spend. It’s that simple. It’s an absurd debate to get into. Always insist the conversation turn to labor and value. Bring the conversation from spending, debt, and wealth back to the basic relationship between the employer and employee.

You’ll discover that the capitalists aren’t capable of discussing value and labor because they typically don’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t done their homework. They’re simply repeating propaganda.

See also my post from last week. I wrote:

5%, in the US, consume 80% of the capital gains income. That income is taxed at 50% of what it would taxed at if it were normal income. 1% control 40% of that capital gains income. In other words, most US citizens don’t have any access to the wealth their labor produces and a few take advantage of all that labor for their own benefit without having earned it.

When you hear a conservative or libertarian talk about personal responsibility, you’re listening to somebody fighting for the cause of the wealthiest and whitest citizens and against the well-being of the majority of citizens who have no access to it now, nor historically ever have. Personal responsibility really means work that others should do so I can continue to benefit from it and it only applies to privileged individuals who can afford to profit from others’ labor.

If you don’t see the class warfare against the poor, you’re an asshole and an idiot.

The Many Become One And Are Increased By That One

As you’ll see, I misused horizontally in the post below. I think I wanted to change an instance using FIND and change all instances from vertically to horizontally, which makes for confusing reading. Suffice to say, some of the instances of “horizontally” should read “vertically”. This is what happens when you type and edit posts in between classes. Sloppy, I know. The binary horizontal-vertical is not really cutting it for my purposes, anyway, and is a stand-in while I work out a different way to write about with more useful language.

dagseoul:

In my last post I wrote:

The longer I teach, I began in 1999, the more I become a student advocate, the more I see my role in the school and classroom as vertically integrated with role my students perform. The more I see our role in direct opposition, in a healthy and productive manner rather than destructive, to the administration and state. Being a student advocate permits me to be an advocate for teachers.

(Updated on April 16: Beginnings of an essay I’m writing about producing space in classrooms. I’m trying to figure out how to address my concern with space and horizontal and vertical just don’t cut it. The two words are shitty training wheels for me to get my thoughts straight as i try to find a better vocabulary. One-dimensional v. multi-dimensional and horizontal v. vertical aren’t the best way to put it, but it’ll do for now. Maybe i need to think about words like transversal. Your suggestions, input are always welcome. Love dialogue. Also want to note i’m using a Whiteheadean concept, the many become one and are increased by that one. I didn’t write that. I’m citing it, implementing it.)

I’m going to go with the flow of thought here and see what I can get out of it, so I can see what I think about the ideas implicit in my statement. I’m not sure vertically integrated is the best way to put it. I’m trying to argue that classrooms are spaces typically, uncritically and horizontally [ed. 5.24.12: apparently, I misused horizontally here. I think it’s clear I meant vertically] constructed to reinforce and passively instruct traditional power structures. Most of us would likely agree with this. Only an authoritarian would take issue so soon.

I believe teachers have the ability to dis-include—in this case, I like dis-include more than exclude—and disrupt traditional, passively accepted power structures by teaching in media res so to speak. Simply describing a teacher stepping from the front of the classroom into the middle of it may seem trite but to accomplish such a small step first requires many more complex rhetorical moves than may not be apparent. Many theorists have discussed what it means to teach in media res. It’s not a new idea. So, I’ll leave the groundwork alone at the moment.

Rejecting traditional, vertical hierarchies in the classroom in favor of a horizontal [note: see the binary doesn’t really work. I have to work on this, but I’m stuck with it for now, so bear with me] framework permits active critical thinking, promotes a tolerance for social difference, insists that conflict can be resolved peacefully, and instructs students and teachers that there is more to cooperation in our society than the future cooperation between employee and employer, boss and worker, master and slave. In addition, it allows for the cultivation of a multi-dimensional classroom.

The traditional classroom is one-dimensional. It occupies a particular space in time and insists that it stays put statically reinforcing an important power structure for future members of the workforce, of consumer culture. It becomes a voice in the unconscious, dogmatically instructing citizens how to behave. Students can look back to their notes only to point to what they learned because the traditional, horizontal structure is not dynamic. It’s remembered, stored away, celebrated on anniversaries, nostalgic, lifeless.

I’m trying to get at intention. The vertically-constructed space of traditional classrooms promotes the worst aspects of rugged individualism in our culture. Traditional classrooms are populated with students and teachers who are permitted to possess their own intentions, goals, objectives, and points-of-view only in so far as their claims are articulated within their appropriate positions within the hierarchy. For example, a student can disagree with her teacher as long as she agrees to obey the teacher. (Two things about this need to be developed further: the agreement to obey is silent and conversation about it is generally not permitted; students are taught that they are free to participate (see freedom of contract and employment at will) and that they can have opinions, but they must decide to choose the authorized correct answers exams. Both of these things are considered good cooperation.)

Traditional classrooms construct and model social space that prohibits critical thinking from successfully working. Traditional classrooms conduct discourse that insists dynamic rhetoric exist in static positions. We really do dis-empower the radical potential for public discourse and habituate participants to embrace self-interest as an interest that knows its proper place. Moreover, a student who competes for the highest position must also be willing to dispossess classmates. Self-interest as an interest that knows its proper place is a grotesque representation of the democratic ideal that the many become one and are increased by that one.

This is why selfish and static ideological and political positions represented by libertarianism are so popular with young people. Libertarianism is the unapologetic acceptance of self-interest for benefit of an individual in competition with everyone else and companion to none. For no rational reason, we teach students that this is in everyone’s best interest. We instruct students to become individuals in spite of their communities rather than individuals that produce their communities. Community is represented as a burden. We teach that John Galt is a heroic individual rather than the reality about his static, lifeless, dreadful existence as a sycophant to the wealthy elite.

In traditional classrooms, teachers insist that a community is only as strong as its weakest link. Teachers and students together work to create value for their classroom, as the best communities can make more money, can learn more, can enrich themselves. (See Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and Race to the Top.) The traditional classroom passively models the market in such a way that knowledge and experience become much less important than a good work ethic no matter what the task. In this way, the traditional classroom produces a society of slaves to the authority of an elite class.

If we reject, even silently reject, the traditional classroom and produce a vertically integrated space in which to conduct lessons, we can provide classrooms wherein multiple intentions can conflict and daily discourse permits original social difference yet requires grand attempts to reach a healthier consensus. This is the fulfillment of the many become one and are increased by that one.

I suppose the key to what I’m thinking about here is that by teaching in media res—refusing to (re)produce a vertically organized space that promotes status-seeking behavior and refusing to play master to a student’s slave—we can actively destroy the worst aspects of capitalist culture, combat Empire without aggressively politicizing the classroom, encourage students to understand that thinking for themselves doesn’t mean competing with other self-interests, fully recognize a healthy consensus in a society that embraces original social difference, and empower students to be strong, confident, critically-minded individuals because they’re confident that we’re all working together for different ends with similar means towards a common cause.

Testing, Testing (Part Three)

dagseoul:

(Edited 22.6.11: for grammos, typos; deleted two, pointless parenthetical statements; added content for clarity; updated related links.)

Related Reading:

• Testing, Testing (where I decided to organize my thoughts & recording my pedagogical principles)
• Testing, Testing (Part Two) (a good definition for teachering)
• Teaching & Teachering (fleshing out the difference)
• The Many Are One And Are Increased By That One (on the production of space in the classroom; teaching in media res; vertical v horizontal, or transversal)

My complaint: I’m a literature and theory guy. I focused on practical linguistics and ESL/EFL during my MA because I was teaching composition and rhetoric and working in two writing centers attended by many foreign students. I wanted to learn how to better address their needs. And I’m a nerd who likes thinking about language and thought. My practicum was a chance to study the science of language rather than the philosophy of language.

I’ve yet to see much practical linguistics put into practice in classrooms, in curriculum. In Korea, contemporary English education fails the majority of students. I know that students at my school could study a little harder, but when I look at them and my work, I have had to conclude that I have no support and they have little. It’s my opinion that because wealthy and privileged Korean elites continue to succeed in spite of the poor English education policies, the failure is ignored.

As we know, public education is criminally underfunded. The Seoul agency managing enough English teachers to populate a small town is operated by a small and overworked staff. What can they actually do but manage? Training is non-existent. Peer evaluation forbidden. Teacher development restricted to a chosen few. That there are thousands of teachers in Korea and no conferences, no retreats, is shameful and a sign that most of the teachers aren’t professionals, but travelers using Korea for one of two things: a break from life back home or to gain a year of experience before entering the job market somewhere else. (I’m always willing to criticize lazy teachers, but it’s mostly the self-promoting idiots who so often pretend to represent teachers in Korea who I’m really pissed at—the scheming white capitalists. The link is only one example. A horrible writer with a horrible blog who often and naively writes horrible things about teaching and teachers.)

Many professional NSETs in Korea appear only too happy to aid the Korean government to further ghettoize english education in support of their careers, leaving Korean students of English in the lurch. When I call my peers unthinking, scheming capitalists, I’m being provocative. Many of my colleagues care, but we’re in the minority here. It’s the same everywhere: many teachers find it easier to be cronies for corruption in exchange for job security. No matter how awful the teaching conditions, the treatment of students, or how low the quality of education become, these folks will find a way to be satisfied to be working in the front of a classroom telling people how to think and what they should know. They aren’t teachers, they’re possessors of knowledge. They don’t teach, they teacher. It’s doing something without action. They’re not teaching, they’re teachering.

I should stay on focus: The successful students are privileged, the ones who have lived in English-speaking countries, or the ones who have a knack for language. The students who need the most help, the kids who struggle, are ignored. I suppose if we look at the problem from an economic perspective, Koreans can argue (President Obama and his administration do) that their education system is successful because the education business is booming, the standards appear high, the competition is tough, and consumers have many highly valued choices. None of that has anything to do with languages and learning, of course, but it’s nonetheless true. Objectively speaking, Korea’s rigorous public and private educational system should be a success.

Education, in Korea as in the USA, is more easily accessible for the most privileged students. Students at my school are poor and don’t get nice classrooms, nice labs, a well-maintained school, good food, access to the best hagwons—nor do they get to travel. English, for them, is something they learn about in Korean and it’s confined to Korean culture. As a result, English is a cultural mechanism that more or less oppresses each of them. This is in direct opposition to how English language is sold to the students: as a means for future liberation.

Koreans do not really understand English language culture and are consciously stubborn about learning how to incorporate that culture in its English classes and wider society. Or is it Korean culture? There is something called 한류 that illustrates how Koreans see the world via their own culture and its distribution and representation around the world, and it might serve us well to think about that when talking about complex cultural problems Koreans and their foreign colleagues confront. Anyway, the text books here are a joke. They are boring and meaningless and very poor approximations of white English-language culture. I’m not a prescriptivist, but no real attempt is made on a daily basis to properly implement English language, even in a Korean manner. The attempt is to use English in Korean—that’s very different.

In spite of these difficulties I think there must be something we can do as teachers to improve a bad situation. Moreover, it’s likely from the teachers and students where the most useful and meaningful innovation in classrooms and curricula will erupt into the wider discourse. The governments and industry professionals are nothing more than market forces. Administrators are aspiring capitalists. They aren’t teachers.

I was thinking about all this while testing my students for the second time this year.

What the students do know about English: In three years, I’ve learned that students know how to take cues form their Korean teachers about English, know how to speak about English in Korean using English vocabulary pronounced in Korean, know how to read English texts and answer multiple choice questions about what they’ve read, know how to listen to English and guess correctly what’s spoken and what it means. That’s what they learn in their regular classes. In other words, that’s what they learn without my presence in the classroom. The students know what it means to have English explained to them and this helps them recognize patterns they’ve studied when they take standardized tests, more often than not, yet be unable to hold a regular conversation. It’s a common complaint among English teachers: Why can they perform well on tests yet are unable to participate in simple conversations?

Students learn to successfully take English exams; they do not learn everyday English. If you go to YouTube, you can see that what many teachers think is useful everyday English education is teaching idioms in an entertaining manner. This would be useful education if the average student understood the basics of English syntax and usage, but the average student does not. Even the most advanced Korean students often lack an ability to use simple transitional elements in their speech and writing. Why? Because students learn English through repetition and memorization. It’s all very thoughtless. They memorize lists of words and patterns for phrases by repeating lists and patterns over and over. I do believe the idea is to get English to as many people at once in as short a time as possible. The result is a country using English in Korean. The result is awful English, awkward English, too-complicated English.

I try to teach my most advanced students to study English differently and to learn to use it by owning it. I developed my method as a writing teacher, but found that when tutoring Korean and Japanese students, it worked for addressing their speech as well as their writing. “Owning it” is rather vague, I know, but this is a blog after all. Allow me the space to flesh it out. My students are not only uncomfortable with English because it’s difficult and oppressive and tied to their futures like an anchor. English is difficult because they use it as a foreign instrument. They are taught that This does not belong to me.

I’ll put it into a Korean classroom context. They way we teach English promotes difference and denies that English and Hangukmal do the same thing, are used for the same purposes. The way we teach English promotes information over meaning, based on a standard of correctness. Nothing in English, in Korean classrooms, is in context with everyday life. That’s a problem. We know we’re not doing right by our students because we know understanding how to present ideas in English means understanding that English speakers and Hangukmal speakers differently represent similar ideas with language. It’s not a simple matter of translation. The arrangement of the languages is different. To speak English well is to understand the languages and their different arrangements as much as it about knowing vocabulary and the parts of speech.

It’s more complicated when we consider how teachers talk to students. One of the most common instances occurs when a teacher attempts to solicit a response from students. Foreign teachers often resist—I have witnessed this—representing their requests in English in a manner most common to their Korean students. (As I said, it’s always out of context.) This is the most significant aspect of my teaching experience that I wish to explore. The failure for the teachers, coteachers, schools, administrators to work on encouraging Koreans to be bilingual (I don’t know a better way to put it right now) is a real problem. The other-ing of English alienates English students and instills a power relationship in the classroom that alienates both teachers and students and cultivates an oppressive hierarchy in the classroom that favors the most privileged students and those fortunate enough to have a natural knack for languages.

The resistance teachers encounter and implement in classrooms cultivates a distance from the students and produces a vertically organized classroom with the teacher located at the top and with the most, if not all, power. I’m strictly opposed to this classroom formation. Confronting my resistance, embracing a bit of discomfort, and attempting (in my case) to find a way to use English in the classroom in a way my students can understand it, that is presenting my students with useful English that a Korean can comfortably use as well, begins to produce a space where English conversation can occur without the oppressive, insistent force of The Test or A Grade. (I’m not only modeling, I’m leading while inviting as my comments invite an attempt. I am attempting as I want them to attempt. This disturbs the traditional power structure in the classroom as well and destabilizes the students’ safe distance from their teacher.)

The Speaking Test: The following is just a quick example of one way I’m approaching thinking about teaching according to my experiences proctoring conversation tests. In my test, I’m asking students simple questions like: “What happened at the beginning of the story?” They can often answer in strings of nouns and verbs. If the story is about a tired boy who refuses to get out of bed, for example, most of my students can say without too much effort, “Boy…bed…annoyed…sleep…alarm…off.” If I insist, “Try making a simple sentence. Use a noun and a verb. I know you can do it.” If they have studied, they can often say something like, “Boy is sleep. (Long pause.) He is turn off alarm. (Long pause.) He is annoyed.” Only a small minority of students can organize ideas and events into useful sentences.

There are many interesting things about the students’ answers that illustrate how a Korean student sees the English language itself and how the students think English should be used. Or, students consider how to say something in English and they navigate the known differences between English and Korean and then add words they think are necessary. This is a problem for NSET (Native Speaking English Teachers) who know nothing about Hangukmal, Korean language culture and everyday Korean speech. The English-only approach to language education is a failure for many reasons, but for this reason it’s most useless. We do not encourage students to understand both their languages, Korean then English, in relation to each other. It limits learning.

If a student wants to talk about the table with the computer and apple on it on the other side of the classroom, they will quickly translate “computer,” “apple” and “table”. They will make use of the verb “To be” and often as a linking verb, whether or not it is required. My students have the most trouble using prepositions and adverbs. As a result, the simply don’t use them at all. As in my example above, I get a lot of sentences similar to “Boy is sleep” and “He is turn off alarm”.

The problem for me, their teacher, is not that I must now create a lesson where I get them to repeat sentence patterns over and over until they get it right. The problem is to resist teaching as their benevolent leader who insists upon correctness and to help them find a comfortable and logical, a meaningful approach to English usage that they can understand well enough to begin using at an intermediate level that, with practice in conversation, will lead towards mastery.

I’m beginning to learn how to do that. But as I implement my method in classrooms, I’m confronted with two problems: lazy and fearful teachers who’d rather stick to the traditional plans in spite of the literature they read in school that supports my approach, and oppressed students who insist that education means receiving deposits of information from their teacher each day that are organized into lists and bullets and that come with directions explaining exactly how to think about the work to be completed.

On testing culture: Students can score high on TOEIC but can’t use basic English to answer a simple question about daily life and/or simple opinion. For the teacher, it’s frustrating. For the student, it’s humiliating. For the education programs in Korea, it should be embarrassing. But it’s not. Why? Hagwons are set up to teach to tests. In the three years I’ve been here, it’s obvious that hagwons are used in conjunction with the traditional education to such an extent that Koreans seem to believe one can’t exist without the other. This is, in fact, the effective privatization of public education. It’s already happened here.

The better students do on tests, the more profit for everyone. It’s a very simple model. Public schools are set up to form a ranking for potential college entrance. I don’t really see any other focus from junior high school to graduation.  Americans wondering where they stand on the standardization of public education in the United States should get to know Korean public education. It’s enough to make you want to kick Arne Duncan in the nuts and tar and feather Michelle Rhee.

The students who perform well on my two-minute conversation test are not really much smarter than the other students. But they know how to use English to say things. I don’t know where they get that knowledge, but with research I’m sure I could find out. I’ll tell you one thing: they didn’t get it at their expensive hagwon and the skill was likely not attained in English class. Show me two kids who excel at a hagwon, I’ll show you ten who don’t. Remember, I’m not talking about test scores. Hagwon and public schools have shown they can consistently produce high scores on standardized exams. Schools have to use vicious, future-determining curves in order to rank students because too many can consistently achieve the highest scores in each class, even at the lowest ranked schools.

So what’s the point of my two-minute conversation test when, no matter my critique, the ranking is much more important? This is why I’m suffering the issue so much, at such a length. There can be no other goal for me than to help individual students recognize that they have the capability to use English for themselves regardless of their scores on tests and rankings in school, regardless of their hagwon experiences. When I return to teaching after I defend my dissertation, I’m going to figure out a more focused manner to address the problems I’ve raised. Maybe I can find funding to conduct real research?

White Girls Say…

nataliealice:

guess I’ll go back to posting photos of cats now.

Guess what? You cannot experience racism in the way you’d like to think you can. People can be mean to you, but not racist. You can experience hate, too. People can hate you. I imagine you’re feeling a little hate right now. But that’s a result of your actions.

In the US, racism is a function of white power. You were born privileged. That pain you feel when watching videos like White Girls Say… is not a result of racism. The pain is a result of you actively repressing your knowledge of white power and passively accepting your privilege rather than actively rejecting it. Your pain is a sign of you denying privilege. It’s typical for you to blame that on poc.

Wake up.

Nice try posting a naive and emotional response and then deleting the url. Internet is 4ever.

capitalist libertarianism is stupid

it’s the persistent failure to recognize that the vast majority of consumers are also the entire population of employees.

the conservation of authentic whiteness is in both its preservation and denial

seltaire asked you: Sorry I am a bit daft, but I am a bit confused what “authenticity” exactly means in the context of this discussion …

_____

To be authentic is to act in a way that illustrates whiteness. White is a legal construction. It’s a legal construction with a social component we call “whiteness” and a powerful ideological apparatus we call “white power”. Whiteness is that behavior that people recognize as white. “Oh, that’s very white of you.” Authentic performances of race are important for many white people because there is no such thing as white. They feel the need to preserve it or deny it. It’s a set of ideas that become visible when people enact them, cultivate them, exchange them, transform them, et al.

Also, authenticity is what white people see in others’ performances of race that they then appropriate and make white.

dagNotes: notes on authenticity and whiteness

balkon asked you: 

What is the “one kind of individual” that is supposed to be “the always authentic individual”? What does authenticity have to do with whiteness in the US? Is authenticity, as an ontological concept, at ends with equality?

Authenticity and whiteness. Complex topic. I’ll just unpack a little. This post will be an effort to explore a couple of ideas. Feel free to participate, add, and/or ask more questions. This kind of stuff isn’t easy to write about, but it’s not impossible and deserves attention. And I’m not going to be a jerk and refer you all to a link with an essay about it. There’s a lot out there about white people seeking authenticity, ontological race, authenticity and race, and ontological whiteness. I love that kind of writing and read it myself. However, I also like trying to work these things out for myself as a writer. So, let’s leave the scholarship aside for a moment and think this through for ourselves.

One particular annoying aspect of whiteness is that white people get great pleasure from evaluating others’ authenticity. Think about Stateless-Crusader seeking to preserve what he thinks makes him white or white allies to poc. Anyway, I’m going to attempt to think about authenticity in a different manner. 

Whiteness is the primary motivating force behind a subject seeking to be white. Many people like to think there can be no ground for whiteness because there is nothing that is white. A lot of white tumblr feminists, for example, like to say they don’t identify as white. Well, that’s cute, but incredibly misinformed and absolutely a sign of white supremacy. It’s a denial about a reality. Just because race has no biological reality doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a social one, right? The white race may be socially constructed but, despite its lack of scientific grounding, white does have a reality in subjects who actively seek to be (or not to be) white. I write about this behavior as possessive whiteness.

White people use their whiteness when it’s convenient. Progressives are worse about it than the admitted racists, in my opinion. The white bigot is a proud bigot. When he’s unconscious of his bigotry, he is still proud of his nation. Progressive bigots aren’t proud. They attempt to repress their whiteness via association with poc or white people who deny privilege. An interesting topic for later: Why do so many white progressives conflate denying privilege with fighting racism?

I use subject rather than individual because white power, in the United States at least, is an ideology that constitutes all individuals as white subjects. The oppressive results are immediately apparent if the mechanism itself is difficult to illustrate. White privilege, on the other hand, is simply to not be a person of color. White individuals need not do anything to be or become privileged. They are always already privileged. Thus, whiteness itself is always at odds with equality.

Authentic whiteness is another thing altogether. Can there be an authentically white person? I’d say, No. Nevertheless, all subjects of white power do seek authenticity. So, what are they seeking if they need not seek to be white? Authenticity is debated in tumblr social justice circles all the time. It’s stupid, though that’s not the kind of authenticity we’re talking about. Let’s remember that. Let’s look at authenticity and whiteness in a different manner. Let’s introduce intersectionality.

We have to look at both race and class together. What does it mean to be an authentic American? Is there a cultural sense of what the ideal American is? If so, then we have a standard for US citizens to seek authenticity. That standard has a powerful ideological apparatus that socially organizes its subjects within a white power structure. 

The ideal American has always been a white, Christian, educated, free, middle-class male. He has never existed but has a long history. We’d have to look back at least as far as the Puritans, if not further, to begin to find a historical grounding for what it means to be white and to find a ground for authentic whiteness itself. We want to examine both character and habit. It’s not a person we’re looking for, but a set of ideas. Whiteness (to be white) is not a person but a social movement and a desire—in other words, a seeking behavior in response to a disembodied and voiceless demand. I mention Puritans only because they were concerned with finding providence in nature while living in the wilderness and that is such an important aspect of whiteness. Whiteness has a destiny. It has an always yet-to-be-fulfilled aspect to it.

To be authentically white is to be upwardly mobile, for example. Another important aspect of whiteness is to acknowledge status-seeking behavior, to represent it, and to reward it. To be authentically white is to be seeking an individuality that is free from social obligation and at its own convenience.

Authenticity is important to whiteness because it makes the value of whiteness apparent.

akagoldfish replied to your post: AMERICAN INSOMNIACS

I have a weird circadian rhythm. It’s genetic.

When I’m studying and writing, I can go for days. i don’t know if it’s healthy, but it’s true. eventually, i sleep. when my mania is in full swing, even if I’m the only person aware that I’m off, I can go without real sleep for a couple of weeks. Maybe like a 90 minute nap every afternoon at most. Kind of a bummer when it happens, especially living with someone.

AMERICAN INSOMNIACS

I’m +9 over here. What is it, 0420 in Chicago?

Only the manics and isomniacs up. Let’s hear it for the insomniacs on my dashboard!

I’m here for you. Ask away.

you know what i hate?

kellikym:

bootsi:

When you’re with someone you like and you have to fart real bad, but you hold it in and then your stomach makes those terrible noises that are worse than the fart itself.

or when someone burps with their mouth closed and the smell seeps out through their nostrils and it stinks like a fcking rhino’s butt.

cracking up. you know i spend all day writing dense prose, but this is the kind of stuff I’m really thinking about.

(via kellkimble)

White Privilege: White is the default American.

My wife (Korean American) and I were talking about Asian Ceiling, and it’s poignant for her. She’s always a foreigner. In Korea, she’s not a real Korean. In the US, she’s not a real American. Fortunately, she didn’t want to be an engineer.

On the Asian Ceiling, part two

For Asian Americans, it’s not you got in to the school of your choice because you’re Asian, as so many white people like to insist. It’s you got in despite you’re Asian.

I used to tell my white composition students who wanted to whine about being white and going to a good school (affirmative action in education) to look up the data on Asians trying to get into school. That would usually result in a request to change topic.

Treat’d.