[BACK]
One day when he walked into his Korean classroom, Matt Franck found a card, a drink and a bouquet of flowers on his lectern. It was Teachers’ Day, “a national holiday I would like to import to the United States,” says Franck, who spent the spring semester of 1998 as Fulbright Professor of American Politics at Yonsei University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Franck had applied for a position in the Netherlands but was asked to go to Korea instead.
Korean students’ deferential attitude toward their teachers permeates the educational environment. “A student would never just hand you a book or a cup of coffee; he would present it to you with a little bow,” says Franck.
Because the teacher is revered, there is a premium on passive absorption of knowledge and rote learning. Franck found it difficult to conduct the seminar-style classes he was used to teaching because his students were reluctant to express their own opinions, with the exception of a few who had been educated in America. “I lectured more than I would normally care to,” he says. “That was a lot of work, but the good part is that they love a good lecture. They really listen and absorb what you’re saying and don’t get bored.”
The students also appreciated and responded well to the way he “marked up” their papers. There were certain characteristic errors -- for example, because the Korean language includes no articles or verb tenses, students would often misuse them in English. “But after I marked an error, they didn’t make the same mistake again,” says Franck.
He admits that he had some of the best students. Franck helped inaugurate a new American Studies program in Yonsei’s Graduate School of International Studies, an English-language, interdisciplinary program that already included programs in Korean, Chinese and Japanese Studies, International Business and International Relations. He had all graduate students, and they were hard workers. But he learned from colleagues that undergraduates don’t always start out that way. “There is such pressure in secondary schools to be among the ones who get into college,” he explains, “that often ‘getting there’ is the main goal.” In fact, the pressure is so high that Teachers’ Day has become somewhat controversial -- some parents offer large gifts of money, through their children, as not-so-subtle bribes to teachers who can influence whether or not the children go on to college. Students who do get in feel they’ve achieved their goal and often go through a period when they spend more time in local bars than in classes. The students Franck had were some of the ones who had taken their undergraduate work seriously and made it through.
Not that his students didn’t have fun. “There was a May celebration while I was there, and the students in my program prepared American food. They had found a recipe book, and they made things like egg salad sandwiches and hot dogs -- it was very Ozzie and Harriet!”
Long known by the West as the “Hermit Kingdom,” says Franck, “Korea, for all its modern commercial and even religious diversity, is one of the most ethnically and culturally homogeneous societies one can imagine.” There he experienced an unusual cultural awakening. In the teeming city of Seoul, with a population of about 10 million, Franck could often go all day without seeing a non-Korean face. At five-foot-nine and 150 pounds, he towered over anyone his own age -- although thanks to improved nutrition, his students, in their 20s, were sometimes his height and, in a few cases, taller. Among the smaller, golden-skinned Koreans, he felt husky and pale and in public often drew stares.
“Because of the grace and friendliness I encountered, this sense of simply being noticed caused me no discomfiture,” he says. In fact, as the weeks went by, he nearly forgot that he was an “other” in this country and felt his aesthetic judgments beginning to be based on Korean models of beauty. In a subway station one morning, among several hundred Koreans, a chance encounter with a full length mirror jolted his attention with the image of “a decidedly ugly white man. Behind me surged a sea of handsome Korean faces, and for just an instant I was able to see myself as the natives of Seoul saw me. I was the alien -- to myself.”
Reflecting on that experience, Franck began to understand a striking difference between the national identity of Korea and that of America, where we pride ourselves on our diversity and pledge allegiance to a symbol of our republic -- “not to a place occupied from time immemorial by a people with common roots in its soil.” In a country like Korea, he says, “the sense of what is ‘one’s own’ is not derived from a political order or a set of ideas. There this sense is derived from an essential commonality that is inhabited by everyone every day on the street, and is visible on faces. No need there to ‘symbolize’ the nation; the nation is in the marrow of the bones.”
One day when he walked into his Korean classroom, Matt Franck found a card, a drink and a bouquet of flowers on his lectern. It was Teachers’ Day, “a national holiday I would like to import to the United States,” says Franck, who spent the spring semester of 1998 as Fulbright Professor of American Politics at Yonsei University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Franck had applied for a position in the Netherlands but was asked to go to Korea instead.
Korean students’ deferential attitude toward their teachers permeates the educational environment. “A student would never just hand you a book or a cup of coffee; he would present it to you with a little bow,” says Franck.
Because the teacher is revered, there is a premium on passive absorption of knowledge and rote learning. Franck found it difficult to conduct the seminar-style classes he was used to teaching because his students were reluctant to express their own opinions, with the exception of a few who had been educated in America. “I lectured more than I would normally care to,” he says. “That was a lot of work, but the good part is that they love a good lecture. They really listen and absorb what you’re saying and don’t get bored.”The students also appreciated and responded well to the way he “marked up” their papers. There were certain characteristic errors -- for example, because the Korean language includes no articles or verb tenses, students would often misuse them in English. “But after I marked an error, they didn’t make the same mistake again,” says Franck.
He admits that he had some of the best students. Franck helped inaugurate a new American Studies program in Yonsei’s Graduate School of International Studies, an English-language, interdisciplinary program that already included programs in Korean, Chinese and Japanese Studies, International Business and International Relations. He had all graduate students, and they were hard workers. But he learned from colleagues that undergraduates don’t always start out that way. “There is such pressure in secondary schools to be among the ones who get into college,” he explains, “that often ‘getting there’ is the main goal.” In fact, the pressure is so high that Teachers’ Day has become somewhat controversial -- some parents offer large gifts of money, through their children, as not-so-subtle bribes to teachers who can influence whether or not the children go on to college. Students who do get in feel they’ve achieved their goal and often go through a period when they spend more time in local bars than in classes. The students Franck had were some of the ones who had taken their undergraduate work seriously and made it through.
Not that his students didn’t have fun. “There was a May celebration while I was there, and the students in my program prepared American food. They had found a recipe book, and they made things like egg salad sandwiches and hot dogs -- it was very Ozzie and Harriet!”
Long known by the West as the “Hermit Kingdom,” says Franck, “Korea, for all its modern commercial and even religious diversity, is one of the most ethnically and culturally homogeneous societies one can imagine.” There he experienced an unusual cultural awakening. In the teeming city of Seoul, with a population of about 10 million, Franck could often go all day without seeing a non-Korean face. At five-foot-nine and 150 pounds, he towered over anyone his own age -- although thanks to improved nutrition, his students, in their 20s, were sometimes his height and, in a few cases, taller. Among the smaller, golden-skinned Koreans, he felt husky and pale and in public often drew stares.
“Because of the grace and friendliness I encountered, this sense of simply being noticed caused me no discomfiture,” he says. In fact, as the weeks went by, he nearly forgot that he was an “other” in this country and felt his aesthetic judgments beginning to be based on Korean models of beauty. In a subway station one morning, among several hundred Koreans, a chance encounter with a full length mirror jolted his attention with the image of “a decidedly ugly white man. Behind me surged a sea of handsome Korean faces, and for just an instant I was able to see myself as the natives of Seoul saw me. I was the alien -- to myself.”
Reflecting on that experience, Franck began to understand a striking difference between the national identity of Korea and that of America, where we pride ourselves on our diversity and pledge allegiance to a symbol of our republic -- “not to a place occupied from time immemorial by a people with common roots in its soil.” In a country like Korea, he says, “the sense of what is ‘one’s own’ is not derived from a political order or a set of ideas. There this sense is derived from an essential commonality that is inhabited by everyone every day on the street, and is visible on faces. No need there to ‘symbolize’ the nation; the nation is in the marrow of the bones.”