Caveat: Children Climbing the Walls and Learning Racism…

… not at the same time, though.

Well, there are good days and bad days. Lately, I think my affect has been improving, despite the recent bout of stomach problems and other annoying but minor health issues. Earlier today, I was feeling pretty positive.

Then I had a bad day. I felt unable to my control my elementary classes, and I sat, exhausted after only three classes, wondering what I was doing wrong. Today I feel like kids were quite literally climbing the walls: there were three boys who somehow managed to start a competition at the back of the classroom to see who could jump highest against the wall, trying to touch a part of the door frame, all while I was going desk-to-desk checking homework. It looked like they were, indeed, climbing the walls. 

Then to cap things off I had one of those "only in Korea" experiences that many people would dismiss out of hand but that left a very bitter taste in my mouth. Sometimes when we have new potential students come to the hagwon, I'm asked to do a "native-speaker" interview to find out the potential student's ability level in English. I went in to interview a young student and she immediately freaked out and started to cry – she was in first or second grade, and sometimes kids react strangely. I wasn't bothered – I ran out and went to get one of my puppets to maybe try to play with the her and calm her down. When I got back to the interview room, though, buwonjangnim told me to skip the interview, as the girl was "afraid of foreigners" – according to the mom.

I have a problem with this way of conceptualizing the problem: this is, in my opinion, the exact way that racism is created and perpetuated. The child's reaction was innocent, I prefer to assume. Something in my manner, or appearance – or even just the stress of being "interviewed" for enrollment at hagwon – startled her and she reacted, but I sincerely believe that children that age are not yet set in their attitudes about "foreigners" as a separate class of humans. The mother, by using the language that she did, and characterizing her daughter's reaction in that way so matter-of-factly, is teaching the child about racial difference and legitimizing her reaction. Everyone, including my coworkers at the hagwon, shrugged it off as "normal" and no big deal. I, however, quickly dropped into a doomy, gloomy feeling full of thoughts such as, "Well I should perhaps just get out of here, then."

[daily log: walking, 6.5 km]

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