RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

No more sugar coating: I hate my Thursday/Friday school. If I had to be at this school more than a day and a half, I would have quit already. My coteacher does NO discipline at all besides the occasional "Be quiet~" and the kids never do what I tell them to do. I'm so done. They have exams next week, which will give me a break, and then I'm showing movies until the end of the semester. Why pretend like they're going to learn anything?

When the new semester starts, I'll do the pages I'm supposed to do (which they totally ignore) then show a video. I'm done putting effort into teaching them. They don't want to learn.

Did you ever notice that the media in Korea can report opinions or numbers but never the two together?

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170622000709

This is a story about income in Korea.

It notes that men out earn women 1.7:1, but doesn't discuss why.

An explanation of why men out earn women, for example, wouldn't be an opinion if backed up by facts and numbers to arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion could be challenged, but the discussion would take place with facts as the basis.

The problem is when actual opinions are entered into the mix to try and shutdown a discussion of facts. For instance, if someone says, "Men are just constantly oppressing women because they're all misogynists" or "Women aren't as capable as men," and this explains the wage difference, then the discussion more often than not becomes whether or not that opinion is true, not why, objectively, there is an actual wage difference. The Western media typically mixes these two together to coverup important issues. The Korean media doesn't necessarily have to go as far because South Koreans are often taught in schools not to question things. If people get upset at the numbers or facts, decades of certain thinking take hold, and then the opinion articles enforcing a concept and that old thinking can be employed.

Yonhap News Agency sort of has that Western style in that they always push a single political line, blurring facts and opinions, which is to be expected as they're state-run.

Did you ever notice that the media in Korea can report opinions or numbers but never the two together?

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170622000709

This is a story about income in Korea.

It notes that men out earn women 1.7:1, but doesn't discuss why.

An explanation of why men out earn women, for example, wouldn't be an opinion if backed up by facts and numbers to arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion could be challenged, but the discussion would take place with facts as the basis.

The problem is when actual opinions are entered into the mix to try and shutdown a discussion of facts. For instance, if someone says, "Men are just constantly oppressing women because they're all misogynists" or "Women aren't as capable as men," and this explains the wage difference, then the discussion more often than not becomes whether or not that opinion is true, not why, objectively, there is an actual wage difference. The Western media typically mixes these two together to coverup important issues. The Korean media doesn't necessarily have to go as far because South Koreans are often taught in schools not to question things. If people get upset at the numbers or facts, decades of certain thinking take hold, and then the opinion articles enforcing a concept and that old thinking can be employed.

Thanks.

I should have said "analysis" instead of opinion.

Did you ever notice that the media in Korea can report opinions or numbers but never the two together?

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170622000709

This is a story about income in Korea.

It notes that men out earn women 1.7:1, but doesn't discuss why.

An explanation of why men out earn women, for example, wouldn't be an opinion if backed up by facts and numbers to arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion could be challenged, but the discussion would take place with facts as the basis.

The problem is when actual opinions are entered into the mix to try and shutdown a discussion of facts. For instance, if someone says, "Men are just constantly oppressing women because they're all misogynists" or "Women aren't as capable as men," and this explains the wage difference, then the discussion more often than not becomes whether or not that opinion is true, not why, objectively, there is an actual wage difference. The Western media typically mixes these two together to coverup important issues. The Korean media doesn't necessarily have to go as far because South Koreans are often taught in schools not to question things. If people get upset at the numbers or facts, decades of certain thinking take hold, and then the opinion articles enforcing a concept and that old thinking can be employed.

Thanks.

I should have said "analysis" instead of opinion.

No, I would say you were correct. One rarely finds an actual analysis in the Western media; just overblown opinions.

Did you ever notice that the media in Korea can report opinions or numbers but never the two together?

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170622000709

This is a story about income in Korea.

It notes that men out earn women 1.7:1, but doesn't discuss why.

An explanation of why men out earn women, for example, wouldn't be an opinion if backed up by facts and numbers to arrive at a conclusion. That conclusion could be challenged, but the discussion would take place with facts as the basis.

The problem is when actual opinions are entered into the mix to try and shutdown a discussion of facts. For instance, if someone says, "Men are just constantly oppressing women because they're all misogynists" or "Women aren't as capable as men," and this explains the wage difference, then the discussion more often than not becomes whether or not that opinion is true, not why, objectively, there is an actual wage difference. The Western media typically mixes these two together to coverup important issues. The Korean media doesn't necessarily have to go as far because South Koreans are often taught in schools not to question things. If people get upset at the numbers or facts, decades of certain thinking take hold, and then the opinion articles enforcing a concept and that old thinking can be employed.

Thanks.

I should have said "analysis" instead of opinion.

No, I would say you were correct. One rarely finds an actual analysis in the Western media; just overblown opinions.

Analysis is really what I want to see, but I do I agree that honest analysis is becoming rarer in the west as well.

We used to see some of it from public broadcasters (CBC, BBC, PBS), but they have taken a swing to the left in recent years.

I used "opinion" in perhaps a more archaic usage - the current use is more aligned with "position".

"I think women are paid less because they often choose lower paying lines of work, and they also often leave the workforce after having children," is an opinion based on some analysis. It is open to new data, and dares you disprove me.

"I think women are paid less because that is their place. I am a [right wing party] supporter, and a member of [conservative religious sect]," is more of a "position" sort of opinion, and not open to new data.

Analysis is really what I want to see, but I do I agree that honest analysis is becoming rarer in the west as well.

We used to see some of it from public broadcasters (CBC, BBC, PBS), but they have taken a swing to the left in recent years.

I used "opinion" in perhaps a more archaic usage - the current use is more aligned with "position".

"I think women are paid less because they often choose lower paying lines of work, and they also often leave the workforce after having children," is an opinion based on some analysis. It is open to new data, and dares you disprove me.

"I think women are paid less because that is their place. I am a [right wing party] supporter, and a member of [conservative religious sect]," is more of a "position" sort of opinion, and not open to new data.

Ultimately, the issue isn't so much opinion vs. analysis, but rather why someone is making a statement. This includes the surface reasons--"A woman's place is in the home because my conservative religious sect says so," for example--and underlying reasons, those not easily seen or quickly realized. Most of the media opinions and analyses present only the surface, which, usually, is not the actual reason why someone in the media would present a concept.

Let's take the conservative religious sect example for a moment. Over the last thousand years, through the contributions to science from men like Johannes Kepler and Charles Darwin to name but a few, the use of religion as an explanation for the physical word began to diminish. Why then, do people still cling to religion, and still further, why do some even cling to extremist religions or cults? This is much harder to answer, but these answers are the underlining reasons for why a conservative religious sect member who hold such a belief regarding women.

I don't necessarily want to go into those underlying reasons because that's not the point here. What I do want to go into is "right-wing" vs. "left-wing" in politics today. First of all, people can call themselves anything they want. Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders can call themselves socialists, leftists, whatever. It doesn't make it true. The Labour Party and Democratic Party are filled with wide ranges of different types of people with different interests. How could a millionaire like Bernie Sanders possibly understand or connect with a common worker in a factory? He can't. Sanders' interests lie in helping his own social clique, that is, other wealthy people (not as wealthy as they would like maybe) and the Democratic Party itself. Look at the past election debacle in the United States where the Democratic Party undemocratically interfered with the primaries to ensure Hillary Clinton won the nomination. Sanders then keels over and hails Clinton and the party platform as the most progressive ever. Were Sanders to have railed against Clinton and the Democrats for their attack on the basic right of people to vote, people likely would have responded and the Democratic Party and perhaps even the two-party system in America would have been threatened.

More to the point, how could Hillary Clinton possible understand the what a common worker is going through today? She can't even fathom it. How does the Democratic Party overcome this? By shouting about feminism and sexism and racism and if you disagree or raise any doubts, you're "literally Hitler." The New York Times carries that sort of "opinion/analysis" today. The liberal media paints its agenda in these identity/phony progressive terms but to elect the worst sort of people; people so bad that the majority of Americans chose abstaining/or a third party candidate over Clinton or Trump. The "swing to the left" of the BBC as you say, is not a swing to the left at all. The BBC, New York Times, etc, as major corporations, all have interests that have nothing to do with common working people. They have to dress up their agendas somehow though, because if they were honest, no-one would follow them or vote for the candidates they endorse. In this way, liberals, SJWs and the like are quite conservative, they just hide behind phony progressivism. They want the same wealth and power as the people who have been in control of governments and companies for years, but to enrich themselves, not help others. A black president or a female prime minister does nothing to address racism or sexism.

The conservatives spout similar nonsense, but they're speaking for the same interests as the liberals; the battle is just over which leading faction will enjoy those interests more. So why does anyone say the things they do? To coverup this basic fact. It may even be rational and make sense--for them. But what works for a wealthy politician or business executive doesn't work for regular people. Right-wingers have for years been suggesting if businesses do well, that'll trickle down to everyone else and the current economic climate around the world shows that's BS. The liberals, in their better days, spoke against this concept and for more rights for everyone, but they have gone so far to the right in the last 20 years or so, that they're becoming indistinguishable from conservatives, except on those identity issues.

Ultimately, people should ask themselves: "Does this political leader actually speak for my interests, my ability to get a job, an education, healthcare, to live in an apartment building that won't go up in flames?" And, if answering in the affirmative, actually find out what that politician has done in the past and who he or she supports. If you have a Sanders who says Wall Street is ruining America, but then backs the Democrats, which is supported by Wall Street no less than the Republicans, you know he's full of shit. It doesn't matter what he says or promises he's going to do, but objectively, if he is working within a certain system, he is supporting it.

Every bloody weekend I wake up to my neighbours having a domestic. Which ones? Well usually it's just one, and while I used to call the cops, now I just get my hammer and go out and bang on their door with it, but today they are all going at it. 4 sets of neighbours all yelling, screaming, men punching the women, the women screaming, more yelling, kids crying.

Why the hell do women even bother to get married in this country?

I don't even live in a shit hole, it's not a bad apartment by Korean standards, and most people have new Korean cars, a sprinkling of foreign cars.

So many of the threads on here are hyperbolic click-bait trash, recently.

I had a skype interview today. I was 5 minutes early, signed on, showing as online, ready to go. I send them a message to let them know that, and they say that it shows me as offline. I check, and it still says that I am online. I let them know, but click to go offline then right back on. I ask if that fixed problems, they took 5 minutes to reply, said that yes, it does work and I am online now, but now it's too late and they have to reschedule.

I did full make-up for this today and now for nothing! 

...

I did full make-up for this today and now for nothing! 

Take some selfies for your social profiles!

[Note:  This is not a creepy "send pics" post.]

When you miss the bus to your rural school that costs what feels like a week's wages to get to by taxi, so you take a taxi to a bus stop that is easy to communicate to the driver only to find out that the car is a 20-year-old stick shift that the driver doesn't even come close to knowing how to max out, and you just BARELY beat the bus to the stop when you should have been at least 10 minutes ahead of it.

It was also seriously the jerkiest ride I've experienced in Korea so far. Didn't have my dramamine to deal with it, either, and I'm still fighting off the headache that came with the motion sickness.

Shitty way to start the week off. But at least most of my classes are getting taken over by other teachers so that they can help the students review/cram for their upcoming exams.

...

I did full make-up for this today and now for nothing! 

Take some selfies for your social profiles!

[Note:  This is not a creepy "send pics" post.]

Haha, note taken. I suppose I could do that indeed. I'm not generally huge selfie taker.

#based, am I number 3? hahaha

My cell service keeps cutting out intermittently and today's school has no wifi (or, more likely, nobody knows or wants to give me the password. Because there was definitely wifi when i first started working here. For some reason my coT won't believe me  )

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

Hah, I got most of them. I think. A couple of them could be multiple users, tbf.

What I find funny about this taxi escapade is it's the second taxi I've been in here in Korea that was a stick shift, and the first driver was probably the best taxi driver I've ever had. His timing between gear shifts was perfect, and he actually knew how to navigate through traffic. Not sure if this second driver was just handed a stick shift car or if he was independent and bought it cheap from somewhere but hadn't really mastered how to use it, yet. Either way, the difference between both drivers was Looney Toons extreme.

When you miss the bus to your rural school that costs what feels like a week's wages to get to by taxi, so you take a taxi to a bus stop that is easy to communicate to the driver only to find out that the car is a 20-year-old stick shift that the driver doesn't even come close to knowing how to max out, and you just BARELY beat the bus to the stop when you should have been at least 10 minutes ahead of it.

It was also seriously the jerkiest ride I've experienced in Korea so far. Didn't have my dramamine to deal with it, either, and I'm still fighting off the headache that came with the motion sickness.

Shitty way to start the week off. But at least most of my classes are getting taken over by other teachers so that they can help the students review/cram for their upcoming exams.

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

1. "You should've known better. Expecting a taxi driver to somehow race a bus and then get on the bus and go to school isn't realistic. Do you think every taxi driver likes to drive fast? Do you think all taxis are brand new automatic transmissions? Just wake up a few minutes earlier and these things won't happen to you."

2. "Taxis in Korea are the best. Taxi drivers in Korea are the best. The bus system here is the best. If you don't like it, why are you here? Consider trying to understand Korea a bit better before you blindly criticize it."

3. "You must be stressed out. Would a massage help? I was partying all weekend so I'm a bit tired, but I could come over and help you relax." want sum luv motel?

4. "Dang, that sucks. I hope you get some #based relaxation time."

5. "You are SO RIGHT. Korean TAXI drivers are tHE WORsT! Next TIME one of THEM is going TOO SLoW just say PAL EE PAL EE KA JOO SAY OH PAL EE PAL EE and he might HURry UP!"

6. "

7. "Korean taxi drivers are racist!!! I was waiting for a taxi and I was constantly refused because I'm a foreigner!! All Korean taxi drivers always ignore all foreigners. Why are Korean taxi drivers so rude? In western countries, taxi drivers are respectful and professional? Why do they discriminate based on my race? I am fluent in Korean, but they pretend not to understand me! All Koreans refuse service to foreigners and treat foreigners like second-class citizens!!"

8. "I've definitely had some rough cab rides out in the country, but luckily it doesn't happen too often. My wife and I generally get lucky and our taxi drivers are pretty nice. Hope you feel better, soon!"

 

I truly, madly, deeply hate teaching with one of my CTs. She's nice and all, but has 0 control over these older students. In order to get them to calm down, she has to basically beg politely and explain to them why they need to be quiet. Erm, how about they need to be quiet because they are students in a classroom! They don't need a logical reason why this activity requires them to be quiet. It should be common practice that they aren't shouting and talking for the duration of class. That's just basic respect.

This makes it impossible to do the same activities that I have been doing for the last 3 years. Some of the things that I know would hit home runs in other classes end up total disasters this year. Today I cycled through 3 different games trying to find one that a certain class could play because they couldn't complete the other games with their bickering and shouting and yelling out incorrect answers on purpose.

If it were up to me, I'd stop the activities early and just give them lines or something. I would ask the students who keep disrupting the class to leave. However, my CT is so soft that she ends up babying them anytime I try to be tough. At the beginning of the year, I talked to her about their behavior so she started taking the problem students out in the hallway for a talk, but they'd always come back in laughing and joking together. Surprise - those students' behavior never changed. The way she plays good cop/bad cop with me comes off as really mocking.

She even babies them about learning. Every time they have to do something that requires slightly more brain effort than rote memorization or repeating, she's going on about "how hard" what we are doing is... except everything I do with these kids is so basic. I rarely ask them to produce any language themselves, I provide skeleton sentences whenever they have to answer a question, I have whittled all my activities down to the most basic parts for these kids this year!

Maybe her way works when she's alone in the classroom with them, but it definitely doesn't work when I'm there. I can't plead with them to be quiet and explain all the reasons why they should do the basic requirements of the classwork every week. It's a bummer. Usually grades 5 and 6 are my favorite to teach, but not this year.

Your teaching style is probably stressing her out, and it's more than likely that she would prefer to baby the students, plead, beg and resign herself to being a doormat than deal with the stress of trying to be a competent educator... Still, you can use this to your advantage.

No use trying to fight with her and the students, simply split the period into her time and your time. If she objects, highlight the advantages to her:

- She'll only need to be in the class for half the period.
- You won't interfere with how she wants to teach.
- Her English ability come under scrutiny as you won't be there to ask her to do difficult
  translations.

Once you've got your time, send her to her office and start teaching. Changing an ill-disciplined class can take a while or it can happen overnight, here's what worked for me:

- THE STICK COMES BEFORE THE CARROT
- identify the 'leaders' of the class, they may be the noisiest or most ill-disciplined, then
  identify the main troublemakers.
- rearrange the class, with an equal ratio of good students to troublemakers in a group or
  put one troublemaker in a group of good students.
- Have an extremely strict set of rules, make sure all the students understand them, and
  enforce your rules with writing out, staying after the bell rings and/or coming having
  detention straight after lunch.
- Focus discipline on the class leaders, once you've broken them, the rest of the class will
  follow. You could also use these students as 'sergeants', with them helping you keep the
  class under control.
- Get the HR teacher to work with you if you're still struggling.

- Once they think of you as Stalin, you'll be able to ease up on the discipline and play games.
  For now, take away all games and restrict the activities to writing out and listening tests.

It's crazy because she's the head teacher and apparently writes materials that the office of education uses. I get the impression she's really well respected as an academic but when it comes to her controlling the classroom... I have no idea what she is doing.

This is interesting to me because the head English teacher at my old school - no exaggeration - struggled to put together a sentence to inform me that there was a schedule change(ee).

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

1. "You should've known better. Expecting a taxi driver to somehow race a bus and then get on the bus and go to school isn't realistic. Do you think every taxi driver likes to drive fast? Do you think all taxis are brand new automatic transmissions? Just wake up a few minutes earlier and these things won't happen to you."
Pecan!

2. "Taxis in Korea are the best. Taxi drivers in Korea are the best. The bus system here is the best. If you don't like it, why are you here? Consider trying to understand Korea a bit better before you blindly criticize it."
Dr. Demartino!

3. "You must be stressed out. Would a massage help? I was partying all weekend so I'm a bit tired, but I could come over and help you relax."
CO2!

4. "Dang, that sucks. I hope you get some #based relaxation time."
That cowshirt fellow.

5. "You are SO RIGHT. Korean TAXI drivers are tHE WORsT! Next TIME one of THEM is going TOO SLoW just say PAL EE PAL EE KA JOO SAY OH PAL EE PAL EE and he might HURry UP!"
Smaug with a shift key error!

6. "
Sonny!

7. "Korean taxi drivers are racist!!! I was waiting for a taxi and I was constantly refused because I'm a foreigner!! All Korean taxi drivers always ignore all foreigners. Why are Korean taxi drivers so rude? In western countries, taxi drivers are respectful and professional? Why do they discriminate based on my race? I am fluent in Korean, but they pretend not to understand me! All Koreans refuse service to foreigners and treat foreigners like second-class citizens!!"
Waaaayyyyygooook!

8. "I've definitely had some rough cab rides out in the country, but luckily it doesn't happen too often. My wife and I generally get lucky and our taxi drivers are pretty nice. Hope you feel better, soon!"
Donovan!

How'd I score? 

It can help to remember that head teachers are probably not in those positions because their English is the best, or they are the best English teachers. In my experience at least, those kinds of positions go to whoever has the most seniority as a teacher, with essentially no consideration for abilities or any other qualifications.