고슴도치도 제 새끼는 함함하다고 한다
hedgehog-TOO self pup-SUBJ sleek-QUOT do-PRES
A hedgehog says its own pups are sleek.
“Everyone thinks their own children are beautiful.” I found this cool 속담 (aphorism) “smart comic textbook” (똑똑한 만화 교과서) which gives a slight variant: 고슴도치도 제 새끼는 예쁘다고 한다 (the word “pretty” substituted for “sleek” – the latter is a reference to the hedgehog’s fur I suppose).
The comic gives as equivalent the English proverb “The crow thinks her own bird fairest” which I’ve never heard in my life, but I can get the sense of it.
This is one of the dedicated teacher’s chief dilemmas: dealing with parents who think their children are something other than what they are. As a foreign teacher with very bad ability to communicate in Korean, I am somewhat sheltered or shielded from this issue in my day-to-day work. I don’t envy my fellow teachers who must deal with parents every day, and I have mostly unpleasant recollections of my dealings with parents when teaching in the US many years ago.
I have speculated that I simply couldn’t do this job if I had to deal more directly with the parents – that the positives would no longer outweigh the negatives.
In that light, I should feel grateful I can’t speak Korean well, because if I did, I would hate my job.
