Thanks to some negative somments about Korean women, one English forum for teachers in Korea is temporarily offline:
As a result of negative newspaper reports depicting but a small percentage of user opinions, we at English Spectrum have decided to pull the offensive forum and are taking steps to re-organize how these forums are operated and monitored.
Yours truly just completed an interview with daum.net about this and other issues regarding English teachers in Korea. The interesting thing is that I just returned from a vacation in America last night and this is the first I've heard of the issue.
Comments about the issue would certainly be welcome as I suppose this is something I should know more about.
Posted by James Trotta at January 16, 2005 8:17 AMI was browsing Daum a few days ago and read that a British car program had made a negative comment about Korean cars. This story, despite being of limited importance in itself, was yet enough to make the front page of Daum.net as another instance of "foreigner" misconduct.
Noone denies that a minority of English teachers can do wrong, and whatever their racial origin surely most of us would be happy to help eradicate the kind of behaviour Daum mentions. But what on earth has this got to do with being a "foreigner" or a "Korean", black or white, rich or poor? This is a question of morality and standards, not of race or culture, and the sooner this is understood the sooner such problems can begin to be resolved.
Also, the reason of course why so many "foreigners" are in Korea teaching English is because Korean employers invite them to come, and pay double the average teacher salary when they get there. Surely the perceived division between Korean and "foreign" teachers is ironic when you consider that they were invited to Korea in the first place.
Whatever the incident, from off-the-cuff remarks on TV shows to teachers misbehaving, racial prejudice and distinction simply cannot serve any useful purpose. Instead of dwelling on our differences, why not devote a similar amount of attention to working together and producing real, tangible results?
Best Regards, wherever you come from,
Jeremy
story made the front page, and while the conduct of such English teachers is unfortunate
I made some similar comments about how Korean employers have to take some responsibility for the types of people they choose to put in classrooms with Korean children...
Posted by: James Trotta at January 17, 2005 8:29 PMMr. Trotta,
You can find everything you need to know on the fiasco from Marmot's Hole at http://blog.marmot.cc/archives/2005/01/14/english-spectrum-gate-continues/. He updates it anytime there is a new development.
Posted by: Mark at January 18, 2005 9:21 AMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.