西洋오랑캐

Having been recently hired by a language school near my house, and due to the fact that my wife also works at said language school, this weekend I found myself in a nearby town for a little on the job training that just happened to go down while I was off the job. This types of events always suck, no matter where you are in the world, but if you have a decent group of people with you can be tolerated. I luckily had that group of people, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but luckily for my co-workers, they had me.

Being an international man of mystery, I’m not going to give the details as to what school I work for (I will let you see pictures), that being said, the orientation we attended was for the Khan English system, since the owner of the school where I am n0w an employee was considering adding the Khan system. Upon learning of this name, I like every geek that came of age in the 1980’s instantly thought of William Shatner bellowing “KHAN!” in the movie Star Trek 2, unfortunately no one else there knew what I was talking about since I was the only non-Korean there.

We arrived at the venue shortly after 1:00 and after signing in, and stealing handfuls of pens, cookies, instant coffee mix, and tea, we were let into the conference hall. The room had 4 person desks arranged in rows of three about ten desks deep. Our group of 12 were seated in the second row from the stage. I looked at the desk. There was a folder with some reading materials, a pen, and a basketball jersey at each seat.

I looked over the basketball jersey. Each one (in our group) was green with a white number 2 in the center. They looked exactly like the basketball jerseys from my elementary school, and in addition to being the exact same colors were the exact same size. After squeezing myself into a tank top that 이효리 (Lee Hyori) would be proud to wear I was ready to be educated in the ways of Khan English…only apparently no one else was ready yet. The schedule listed the start time as 1:30, but since no one else had arrived yet, that was going to be pushed back.

Luckily for us in the audience, Khan English brought some videos…of their recent English Competition (because everything is a contest or competition here). As soon as the film started I was less than impressed with Khan. The contest (and as I learned later, their program) consisted of little more than yelling random English phrases as loud and as fast as one could ten times.

Practice with this phrase: I’m going to the movies with my dad. You did it ten times? I’m sure even native speakers ended up sounding like “I BUHHHH BUHHH BUHHHH DAD!” at the end. Now imagine children, who are not fluent bellowing random phrases as fast as they could. On of the Korean teachers turned to me and asked, “What is that girl saying?”

I replied, “Honestly I don’t know.”

After about 30 minutes of watching video footage of Korean children bellow their way through some scripted dialogues. the Khan seminar began. Like I mentioned before, I was the only non-Korean there, so the entire thing was conducted in Korean, but not your standard issue, straight out of Seoul, but in some sort of dialect that had some of my co-workers scratching their heads from time to time. The first person to speak was a middle aged woman with a horribly annoying voice. For those of you in Korea, or with extensive knowledge of Korean children’s programming, she sounded a lot like the witch on the television show, 하나 둘 셋, which is a pretty horrible thing to sound like.

Upon realizing that she was reading the handouts we had recieved word for word, and not adding anything, I began doodling in my folder, and procended to spend the duration of her presentation doing so. I would occassionally stop what I was doing to check if I had heard something correctly (”Did she just say, ‘one breast training method?’”). After reading to us for 2 hours, occassionally breaking to cackle, she decided that we had endured long enough…so she rewarded us with a five minute break time. Oh how sweet those minutes were. While some in my group used the bathroom, and others prayed for the sweet release of death to come, I spent that five minutes stealing more instant coffee than I could ever hope to consume before returning to America.

The next speaker was a fellow that was all about chatting me up in English. He was the type of character that every white person in Korea has encountered at least once. While his English was not bad at all, he just had no real conversational skills, so talking to him was more annoying than anything else. I understood that he was just trying to make small talk, but please for the love of all that is good, talk about something interesting. If a person proclaims that they don’t watch winter Olympics because they think it is like gym class, move on to another topic, they clearly have no interest in short track speed skating.

So he chatted up the audience with the practical teaching methods of Khan. Basically it worked like this…you, the students and the teachers, learn English by yelling as loud and as fast as you can. Apparently this turns one’s “local speaking muscle into an international muscle,” (their words, not mine). In order to aid in this madness, Khan offers a full line of DVDs that can be used in class to assist in the screaming teaching. These DVDs featured the most mind numbingly dull personalities ever. Each word of phrase would be repeated four times by different people at an increased volume and speed. So it started out with the soft spoken, blonde lady who was kind of like a kindergarten teacher, “Great.” Next was the dork in glasses with a speech impediment, that emoted way too much when he spoke, “Great (facial tick…facial tick…eyebrow spasm).” Next up was the chimpmunk looking woman that was reading for a teleprompter as fast as she could, “Great!” And finally, my personal favorite: guy with a rage problem, “GREAT!” That dude seriously would have veins popping out of his face as he “taught English.” It was so GREAT! I mean great.

So we watched guys screaming junk about watching a movie with their dad, and I became less and less enthralled with Khan (not that there was ever a point where I was enthralled, save for perhaps the point where I saw free coffee and cookies). I think the thing that bothered me the most was that all that the kids doing in the video was memorizing a script (which is different from actually learning a language) and reguritating that script and most people thought these kids spoke English well. However in one scene in the video, the white guy goes of script and the kid gives such a random answer, since they just memorized what they had to say, and weren’t actually listening to what was being asked. The sad part was, I was probably the only one that realized it.

After screaming for a good hour or so, and winning some prizes for being able to speak English (and in one case Korean), it was dinner time. Dinner was rice and kimchi, which was on par with what I expected. After dinner we were assigned rooms. My school had one other man so we ended up bunking up with some dude who had the hair cut known in Korea as a “sports cut,” (basically a crew cut or flat top) and sounded like a frog…I dubbed him “Sports Cut,” since I couldn’t remember his name. I did not care for “Sports Cut.”

Following dinner it was time for more screaming and yelling. We were broken into teams and were given some junk to memorize and then bellow as fast as we could in a race against the clock and the other schools. Khan decided it would be best to break this down into three Herculean tasks. The first task involved reading a short, poorly written passage about computers as fast as we could…as a group. After a couple of failed attempts which came about due to the fact that we couldn’t end at the same time we passed the test and moved onto task two.

The second task involved our teams yelling the slogans “God helps those who help themselves,” and “The early bird catches the worm,” ten times each taking only one breath on each attempt. Needless to say by the tenth time each phrase sounded kind of like, “BAH HAHNNA BBAHAA BBAAA!” Apparently that was good enough since we passed and moved on the phase three.

The third phase involved shouting about the virtues of Khan English and doing some hand motions that went along with these virtues. Our team got the whole song and dance down perfectly and were ready to be tested. Unlike the previous tests, which had been administered in various conference rooms, this final task was held outside on a soccer field under the lights. We were marched out onto the field and positioned in such a way that a member of the Khan S.S. could look down on us, but all we could see was a black outline of a man. We delivered the creed with outstanding prowess. This was apparently not good enough for Mr. Khan, and we were commanded to step back (military style) and practice before attempting it again.

We practiced several times, got our hand motions synched up (since that was where we had a little trouble), and then returned to be judged again. We delivered the creed with a fury and vengence that would have made Mr. “I’M GOING TO A MOVIE WITH MY DAD!” from the video proud. Apparently that wasn’t good enough either. The Khan-hole had us turn around and then either he, or another Khan-trooper moved down our line and made each of us yell as loud as we could. They started at the opposite end from me, and as he moved down the line telling random 40 kilogram Korean women that they aren’t loud enough, I started to get pissed off.

What did any of this have to do with teaching? Why should we listen to this tool anyway? He’s not paying me, he’s not my boss…hell, he’s not even my boss’ boss. I’ve been yelling all day, I’m done yelling…we’re done yelling.

In my time here I’ve been pretty accepting about a lot of stuff. Yes, it’s a different culture, I’m a guest, they do things differently here, but at that time, my inner American asshole bubbled up to the surface. “This is bullshit…we’re not gonna yell anymore.”

Then it was my turn. The man approached me. I looked him in the eye…and did nothing. He looked slightly perplexed, and offered up a command in Korean, telling me to yell from my stomach as opposed to my throat. I stood, unmoving. “Perhaps he didn’t understand,” he glanced at the co-worker standing next to me as if to explain to me in English.

“이해하지만 안 해, (I understand, but I won’t do it.)”

There was a brief moment as the words came from my mouth that I thought the guy was going to hit me, and he did…kind of. As he walked past me, he gave me one of those “good try” shoulder pats that gym coaches give out, or soccer players give the opposing team so they don’t look like jerks at the end of the game. From there he began a speech about how we didn’t give it our all and that it wasn’t Khan style and how bad we were…so I gave it my all and scream as loud as I could.

He paused, looked at me and then started again. “Khan does not look highly upon losers. Are you losers or…”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I bellowed again. It was the kind of a scream that while doing it you know you are going to be unable to speak the next day without horrible pain.

The man gave up and told us that we were done and could go inside. We marched off the field and while the rest of my group headed in, I stayed outside. I’d had enough for the day, I didn’t want to have to go in and take the oral exam about the Khan system and how it worked. If I was a smoker I would have smoked, but I’m not, so I just sat on a rock.

A while later when I went inside the other teachers in my group were in awe of what I had done: telling an authority figure off. Tests were finished, so we were given bread and then we all retired to our rooms for the night…only my group had a different idea involving alcohol. So we had drinks and discussed the merits of Khan, and how rediculous this whole thing was, and the fact that when I left, Sports Cut was in our room studying the Khan system.

The drinking was much better in terms of fostering an atmosphere of team unity than any of the other nonsense we had done up to that point. After many bottles of booze we all called it a night. I went back to my room and off to sleep. I awoke about 3 hours later when at 6:00, Sports Cut woke up. I looked for the bread I was given the night before, but apparently Sports Cut had eaten it. That bastard!

So after a quick shower in a sink, our group gathered together for a quick breakfast before we moved on to more Khan-style hi-jinks. The morning offered two different, simultaneous presentations: one for the teachers and one for the owners. Since I currently own little more than some books and CDs, I was forced to endure the presentation for teachers.

The teacher presentation wasn’t so much a presentation as it was a hands on experience / trip through the darkest recesses of hell. We we broken down into arbitrary groups and each group was sent up to the front of the room, one group at a time. From that group one person had to teach the Khan way while the other people in the group in the acted as students, and the other groups doodled in their books, slept, and cursed themselves for being in the room.

Somehow my group had the pleasure of being the first group to show off what we had learned. The Khan overlord selected one of the other teachers from my school to go up in front and play the part of a Khan English teacher. Perhaps inspired by my act of defiance the night before she refused. The man selected another teacher from my school. She too protested, but this time the Khan overlord was more insistant.

“Screw this…” I thought to myself and then stood up and bellowed (Khan-style), “I’ll do it!”

So I walked up to the front of the room, was handed a strange lesson plan written entirely in Korean (save for the word DVD) and was told, “Ok, teach.”

So I began teaching. Not the Khan way, but my way, making use of Khan materials. In all honesty, I was throughly under prepared to attempt to teach anything, yet somehow I had not only my fake students’ attention, but the attention of the entire audience. The laughed, did what I told them to do, and overall were in the palm of my hand, all of this inspite of the fact that the Khan overlord kept interrupting me to attempt to make me use Khan screaming tactics. “Sorry man, I can’t live by your rules!”

So I blasted through the lesson plan with a lot of “Oh, I guess we’re going to watch some sort of DVD now…that should be awesome and/or loud. Get ready to scream along kids!” Finally I was told to wrap it up…so I did with a “Alright, here’s the homework. Have a nice weekend! Peace out kids!” And I walked out of the room among a chorus of laughter and applause. I should have kept walking, but something drew me to return, so after stealing a few more handfuls of coffee mix I entered the room, and sat down with my commrades to watch the other groups present.

Like I said, I should have kept walking, since what I saw was some of the most painfully tedious teaching ever. I’m not saying every class has to be a three ring circus or a rock concert, but when teaching children, you’ve got to be at least a tad engaging or else kids are going to sleep, doodle, or engage in other non-academic persuits during class time. So on the one end of the bad teaching scale were teachers that were just mind-numbingly dull. On the other end was “S-Tina T-shirt.”

I think she actually wanted to say “Estina Teacher,” but it came out as “S-tina T-shirt.” I’m not one to make fun of the average person’s English ability, since it’s their second language, but if you are an English teacher, you should at least be able to speak the language with some fluency. This woman made the same kinds of mistakes that elementary school students I teach make. Things like “Open book,” (as opposed to “open the books,” or “open your book,”), “eh-buh-ri-ba-ti,” (in place of “everybody,”) and then my favorite, “Look at my teacher’s eyes.” I’m not really sure what she was attempting to say, and I wasn’t the only one, since her spoken Korean wasn’t that great either. A mess of dialectic nonsense, poor English, and the Khan method made her presentation the worst…but for some reason she was given the most time.

Thankfully after some 2 hours or so, the whole thing was over. We were given certificates for successfully surviving the Khan Training Program, a hot lunch, and were sent on our way. All in all, it was a pretty huge waste of time, but at least now I can write that I received a certificate of completion for the Khan program on my resume…since it’s so important.