Caveat: 두려움과 배움은 함께 춤출 수 없다

Fear and learning cannot dance together.
Today at work, I got a ride home with my coworker Mr Lee.  He’s like the vice-vice principal.  I think he’s a nice guy, and I can tell he’s really smart, but I mostly appreciate him to the extent he runs interference with the nefarious vice principal.  He has a difficult job.
I used to interact more with him, when I was carpooling with Mr Choi last spring.  But Mr Choi transfered to another school, and Mr Lee was too recalcitrant, for whatever reason, to offer carpooling – mostly, I suspect, because he has very little English, and feels badly about that.
2943459s Anyway, I sat in the back seat of his Kia (there was another teacher in the passenger seat, the new social studies teacher who replaced Mr Choi, whose name I haven’t figured out).  And there, on the seat, was a book.  Being the typical curious person that I am, I began deciphering the title, and with the social studies teacher’s help.  And I discovered it was something I’d heard of:  the Albany Free School (q.v. at wikipedia). The English title of Mercogliano’s book is Making It Up As We Go Along, but the Korean title is 두려움과 배움은 함께 춤출 수 없다 [fear and learning cannot dance together], which, frankly, I like a lot better (Korean edition cover at left).
It’s interesting to me, sometimes, to realize there are a lot of “new ideas” circulating in education circles, in Korea – even in a backwater like Yeonggwang County, where the evidence of progressive pedagogy on the ground is almost zero.   Given my own background in “alternative education” (both my grandparents’ “Pacific Ackworth” experiment (1940’s-60’s), and my own time at Arcata’s “Centering School” and my teaching at “Moorestown Friends” in 97~98… all these things have exposed me to a lot of alternative pedagogical thought and left me convinced that convention, in education, is way overrated.
And there, on the back seat of a vice-vice principal’s car in Yeonggwang County, Korea, there was another little piece.
[this is a back-post, added 2010-11-20]

One comment

  1. Sanghyo

    Fear and Learning cannot dance together… I like it alot better than the original title. Bye the way Hi Jared? Are you still reeling from the aftermath of 북한산 hiking??? HOpe you are having a very peaceful and restful weekend. 🙂
    Take care

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