Tag Archives: Asianess

Education: What is right for our future generation? (part 2)

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Last time, I talked about Korean Education and how it is different from Western education. To summarize, Korean education is rigid style which base on the textbook and memorize. Contrasting to it, western education offers individual creative thoughts toward the certain issues or topic.

I briefly talked about Education in order to mention about the on going issue happening in Korea. To explain what this issue is, the current president of Korea decided to change the textbook of Korea, specifically History textbook.

What’s so special about it?

Well, until now, Korea used various textbooks; no fixed single textbook to be used in the education. So sometimes books covered slightly different information and focus points. But current president Park Geun Hye decided to change this and unify into single book. It sound pretty reasonable. But there are a lot of disagreement going on between students. Let’s see what are some agreements and disagreements of unifying history textbook.

Agree:

  1. Since there are various history textbooks (more than one kind), confusion can be caused upon students in learning history. It is because different publishing house include slightly different knowledge. (They have main topic to teach but it may vary upon which textbook they are using).
  2. It is believed that history should be taught in “neutral” perspective. Indicating that history should be taught in an objective standard.
  3. There are a lot of errors or mistakes made in the authorized textbooks. So the mistakes should be almost completely fixed in new textbooks.
  4. It is duty for us, governors to deduce the pressure on entrance examination. (Entrance examination is the exam that high school students take in order to go to university. Apparently, there is increasing pressure given to the students due to this examination getting harder.) Also, since there are a lot of textbooks covering slightly different information, students have to study all of them in preparing for examination.

Disagree:

  1. We should teach students in various and wider perspectives/ opinions so they are not slanted to single perspectives or opinions.
  2. The interpretation of history is just a part of study but it can’t become solid opinion.
  3. History can be made through debate but not solidly through opinions and interpretation. (Meaning, history can’ be decided and recorded according to one’s opinion or interpretation. But rather has to be debated to find one general idea)
  4. When it comes to history, when publishing textbooks, it could include views that may be biased/ prejudiced. (Because people share somewhat different perspectives toward single event or idea)
  5. Even though the publishing companies are independent, it doesn’t mean the published textbooks just get in to students’ hand without going through governments’ verification.
  6. For example, one of Korea’s Independent activists, Dr. Yoon Bong Gill is great example. In Korea and China, he was and is considered as one of the greatest activists who fought for the independence from Japan. Moreover, China’s most powerful authority mentioned single Chosun man (Korean man) did what China’s 100 thousand soldiers couldn’t do. On contrary, from Japanese government, he was mentioned as terrorist and murderer for killing their general. This shows how the words, phrases and sentences are decided through the which perspectives it is being viewed through. Moreover, it changes the perspectives of the students depending on what perspectives they are created to be viewed.

In present, opinions of citizens were quite competitive but it is inclined more toward disagreement.

Personally, I am more inclined to disagreement due to various reasons. First of all, as some of who went through IB program in my high school, I know that history is very sensitive topic to talk about. It is because history can be changed as the time flows by where they have more evidences been found with technological advancement and others. Moreover, history that we are currently learning may not be true. It may change completely because we know history is mostly based on the record that is left by winner” of the event.

The reasons that I disagree is:

  • Current textbook is anyway going through verification of Government of Education to check any inappropriate information included so why there is needs to create new textbook that is unified. –> Also could think it is waste of money.
  • Personally, I believe it is REALL IMPORTANT to view history in different perspectives rather than one single perspectives. History forms when different ideas come to form into one. (It is because history is mainly recorded events, people has different perspectives and view even though they are standing at the same spot at the same time.) So, going through various perspectives to create history book is VERY important.
  • It is true that examination is hard. How about making the examination easier since students are not only struggling with single subject, History but all other subjects.

What do you think? 

Education: What is right for our future generation? (part 1)

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Education in Korea…. What do you think of it?

As someone who experienced elementary school education and western side of education, I know how it is different. I felt it through my skin.

To be simple, Korean education is fixed and western is not. Fixed means no creativeness. Korean education does not require any creativeness nor personal thought. It is rather based off from the textbook that was given from the school and study only from it. You don’t need to know why it is like that or how it became like this but rather memorize just because it is on textbook and what teacher said. It was just recently when they started to ask about personal opinions and ideas toward certain perspectives or facts but it is still lacking to show individual self. Of course it doesn’t mean students in Korea do not have their own perspectives and ideas toward what they are learning.   Some do but not all of them. To me, when I was in elementary school in Korea. The way to study for the quiz or test was to memorize what is on the textbook and statistical number. For math, just memorizing equations so I could use them to solve problems.

For Western education, it is different. They do have some parts where you have to memorize some factual information but in class, teachers explain why it is like that through various activities that involve ourselves to experience or to show videos and others that is much easier to understand. In high school, doing science, we actually do dissection to see how and why the system is like and what is actually like. It is more intriguing, interesting and easy to memorize.

Not only from learning but also we know when communicating with teachers. In Korea, when you are to speak to teacher or the class is the time when teacher asks question to be answered from students. You do not just speak your ideas in but you raise your hands up to be picked to speak. Then you stand up to say it out loud. On the other hand, in western education, you are given any time to speak out loud about your ideas and freely interact with teacher and other students about the answer that you have. There is mostly not fixed answers but more of personal ideas and thoughts.

Even in university, this can be shown. Recently I saw interesting slideshow where it shows the difference in Korean and Western universities. When giving lectures, professors in Korea do not provoke questions but rather just say what he has to teach and facts that will be on test. For western universities, it is rather giving students questions or topics that will lead to natural conversation about the idea that students may have.

Both sides have advantages and disadvantages but these are main things that I felt was some what “Asianess” and basic knowledge on what I am going to write next.

What are some of your thoughts?

12 hours… 65 years

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If you are looking through recent news regarding to Korea, you will find something interesting yet rather depressing regarding to North Korea and South Korea.

To summarize, after long time, politicians had two different perspectives toward ruling the land of Korean Peninsula. One was communism and other is Democracy. Due to their different perspectives toward how to rule the peninsula, they decided to divide the peninsula into two half in order to rule as they believe what is good. This happened in 1945.

In 1950, North Korea’s government wanted to take over the whole peninsula so on June 25th, at 4am, invaded suddenly. This caused the whole peninsula to be in panic. All the males were taken to military to be trained to fight in war. According to the families that were separated, they mentioned how they will be separated only for 10 days but it ended up being 65 years.

Some people were separated due to male members being away for military and ending up not meeting them every again. Some people were separated while they were trying to evacuate as far as possible. Most of them were separated due to great amount of crowd trying to go toward south or north.

After the war paused and had treaty signed to have temporary peace, North Korea’s and South Korea’s government came together to let the separated families to meet together after a long time. There were times when this event paused due to continuous troubles and conflicts that happened between the countries. But in 2015, they actually made up to let dispersed families to meet after 65 years.

https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/posts/10153155009284071 (from Facebook page, Business Insider)

This is the video where it has the English subtitles and what I found interesting was the comment that was left under the video. They mostly commented on how it is cruel to separate the family and letting them meet for only 12 hours instead of helping them to live together.

From here, I was able to see how it was relevant to one of GRSJ 230 classes that we had talking about law oppression toward minorities. It was not “minorities” but the main reason that they can’t live together was one of the laws of North and South Korea. Causing the war itself it painful to the race but suppressing them so they can’t meet showed deeper feelings for people who can’t see each other even though they breathe same air, stand on same peninsula.

From Tuesday to Thursday, some fortunate people were able to meet their separated family. However, there were another issues that government couldn’t afford to let all the people to meet their separated family, that they had to draw certain people out.

Looking at this ongoing sadness and conflict, I hope peace to come fast.

“It goes ill with the house where the hen sings and rooster is silent.”

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“It goes ill with the house where the hen sings and rooster is silent.” (암탉이 울면 집안이 망한다) is one of famous proverbs that Koreans are aware of.

Why am I mentioning this in GRSJ blog? Guess what! This is the proverb that indicates significant gender inequality in past Korea.Let’s analyze that proverb to specify why this indicates “gender inequality”.

Hen represents female or female members in the family. Rooster, then obviously  represents male or male members in the family. The rooster itself is the one that makes noise in the morning to wake the people. Moreover, rooster is the leader that leads the hens. So it is symbol that shows when the female being noisy (a.k.a getting involved in politics or even family matter) was considered bad omen. Mainly because the role of women is being the “lady of the house”. Doing houseworks, chit and chat with neighbouring ladies of the house (in same status) and behave well and assist one’s husband well so they don’t lose their face in the society. So if they get involved in the “roles of male” then it was sign that the house would result in destruction.

Incident that is most closely related to this proverb happened to last empress of Korea, Queen MyeongSeong.

This is my own artwork that I produced from IB Art. This is based of the assassination of Queen Myeongseong.

This is my own artwork that I produced from IB Art. This is based of the assassination of Queen Myeongseong.

http://mariachung.wix.com/artisp201415#!final-artwork/c1m72 

The queen was assassinated by Japanese government, specifically soldiers who were ordered to murder the queen. She is one of the females that advocated different political issues of Korea to help the country to stay as the country itself. This involves the historical background regarding to invasion of Japan in 20th century. The queen was trying her best to rule out Japanese government from taking over Korea. Considering the queen being obstacle to their future aim, Japanese government set up Empress Assassination plan.

October 8th, Japanese soldiers invaded the castle and started killing massive amount of people who got in their way. When they finally reached to the bedroom of queen’s, they did most outrageous actions to the queen and assassinated her. This is called Eulmi Incident.  Currently, Japanese government is denying the fact that assassinated the queen (even with the eye witnesses) and trying to refuse to apologize.

Back to the point, Empress MyeongSeong was considered as one of the victims of “hen” that caused destruction to the household of hers, the kingdom of Korea. The cause was her passionate advocation in the politics. That’s what people think it is. I personally believe, that she was murdered due to the narrow perspective of ancestors toward women in general. If they have considered the opinions of the women and listened to them at least small bit, the history could have changed.

What do you think of it? Any opinions regarding to the proverb that I worked with since high school?

( The artwork is my own and it is created for the sake of gender inequality and the social injustice that happened in Korea 20th century. I consider this as one of interesting yet painful part of the history. If you want more information regarding to art piece, there is link up there that leads to my personal art blog or just leave comments~)