Teacher, Do You Know Big Bang?

This is a guest post by my friend Richard Pennington. I have known Richard many years back through Social Media. Richard is a Sport Historian who wrote several books like "Breaking The Ice", "For Texas, I will" and many others. Richard currently lives and works in South Korea. You can read from Richard by accessing his website  http://richardpennington.com/

Five years ago, I was doing my best to inspire reluctant Daegu kids to read, speak and write in English. In a few cases, I may have been successful. It was a two-way street, as I learned things from them. I had not been in the classroom long before one black-haired girl inquired breathlessly, “Teacher, do you know Big Bang?” I was then unfamiliar with that all-male musical group, but I went to Google and got hip. Ah, K-pop. It seems to be on every other television channel. And until recently, a music store stood across the street from my apartment. It hosted monthly gatherings of K-pop bands and scores of their enthusiastic female fans. I accosted a woman in the street and asked who they were. These guys must be really big, I told her. No. She informed me that they were newbies, just beginning on what they hoped would be the path to stardom. The girls were begging for autographs, shrieking and taking cell-phone videos of young men who had not yet done anything. Color me puzzled.

Now admittedly, there is a generational issue here as I am older than the performers and nearly all of their fans. A cultural difference surely is involved as well; were I of Korean descent, I might have a much greater appreciation for K-pop. But I honestly doubt it. K-pop seems so very shallow to me. These big companies have a system for choosing and promoting boy- and girl-bands. (They do seem to be exclusively single-gender.) With an eye on recent trends, they hold tryouts, choose a few good-looking kids and then give direction. The cut of their hair is dictated, as well as their clothes, their singing style, their dance moves, the personalities they project to fans and the media—everything. They are even told how to preen and pout. Many who seek that extra something undergo plastic surgery. It seems completely artificial to me, and I am a person who is inclined to like, admire and respect things Korean.

One may fairly contrast it with the system in Cuba. There, the singing, the dancing and the playing of instruments is learned from the ground up. It is organic, rich, deep and polyrhythmic. I would dare say contemporary Cuban music has soul. There are no businessmen in Havana seeking to manipulate the popular music scene. It happens and evolves naturally.

I despaired after reading a news article recently about the Gangnam district where I live in Seoul. It says that more than 100 hip-hop dance schools operate here, and the number of teenagers attending them is on the rise. Hagwons that once taught ballet, piano or classical guitar have given way to establishments that emphasize how kids can impress the aforesaid businessmen and become K-pop stars. Some of them attend classes every night of the week and spend their spare time studying K-pop videos on YouTube.

Korea, like all countries, has problems, some of them quite serious. Our best and brightest should be focused on solving those problems and creating a better future. We emphatically do not need them wasting precious time and energy on puerile dreams wherein they might become a part of the next Girls Generation, Super Junior, SHINee, TVXQ or T-ara—regardless of the fact that if they are among the chosen few, they will be awash in money and adulation, and sell out Madison Square Garden.

What’s that sound, you ask? It’s the sound of me, whistling in the dark. 

"Cure Them With The Cause Of Their Own Disease"

I have been working as a university lecturer for a few years and I have noticed during this time a distressing major change in the attitude and behavior of students inside and outside the classrooms. I know it sounds like I am an older generation person saying “my time was much better than today”, but I do believe that people working in the field of education have a common problem: students’ careless attitude and their high dependence on technology. 

Recently, during one of my lectures, I have noticed one of my student using his smart phone. When I asked him not to do so, he looked at me as if he wants to say, "your information is available to me on this device, why should I just listen to you". My reaction to him was: "I know that you can google-it but you need to know that it exists first. My job here is to teach you the basics, give you some hints so that you can go and search for the details at your pace". 

Today's youth are a far cry from our generation who grew up technology-naive, with no Internet or computer games. Now a lifetime of reality TV shows, the Internet, and dawn-till-dusk computer gaming has created a generation so used to being bombarded with fast-turnover information, they filter it instantly without paying much attention to its meaning. Hardly any effort is made to read a book, to solve a problem, or even to do a very simple calculation mentally. This generation is not willing to decipher any complicated messages; it just wants simple things. It is looking for an “instant” education.

     Isn't it time to stop being too dependent on the technology we have invented? Already many people are going back to more basic lifestyles. They are limiting their access to television to weekends only and restricting their usage of the Internet to one hour daily. Although a moderate use of the Internet is very important for learning and sharing information, however, an excessive use of it hardly gives us any extra benefit. To the contrary, our computational logic diminishes and physically speaking we become unhealthy.

Now how can we face this problem? We should start by asking ourselves these simple questions: Is technology dominating our lives and killing family conversation? Have we thought about what it would be like to put aside (even for a little while) all the gadgets of our hectic modern lives and go back to a simpler life and see how we would get on? Probably we could trade the TV for a few books, the Internet for some family discussions, and computer games for some real sports and physical activities.

The job of educators is quite important to handle this problem. They must know how to provide the right message to the students at the right time, and in the right way. Since youngsters’ patience and concentration thresholds are lower than what they were 20 or even 10 years ago, taught subjects have to be as obvious and practical as possible to get their messages across. Young people locate information very quickly. But in terms of what they take in, it has to have instant impact because they are so easily bored.

Also, instead of being just passive consumers of the latest technology, we should let them use it in a productive way. As a child I used to turn to my older brother for a help to solve my difficult homework.  He had a very clever way to make me do the work myself by telling me: "I only can give you some hints, you go and try to solve it yourself and then comeback to me for correction". This trick worked very well for me and I guess we could apply it with our students: Teach the basics, give some hints, let them do their tricks by "googling it" or using other tools that we may don't know to learn more about it, and  finish by correcting and discussing their findings. 

Finally, I believe, or at least I sincerely hope, in this way, our youngsters will stop wasting their time on indefinite computer gaming or surfing the Web aimlessly. I will close by stating an old local saying, “we shall cure them with the cause of their own disease”.

[ Drawing by  Hoda Maalouf  ( @MaaHoda ) ]

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