Sitting in our staff meeting yesterday, I saw this phrase on my agenda. I thought it was something profound – some aphorism or exhortation or effort at being philosophical or metaphorical or deep.
But it’s not. It’s just telling us not to sit on the desks while teaching.
열정적인 강의-
impassioned-be-PART discourse
책상에 걸터앉은 수업 지양토록
desk-LOC straddle-PART class try-not-to-do-discussion
“Be an energetic teacher- try not to sit on the desks during class.”
Sure. Fine. I don’t normally sit on desks during class.
This is perhaps an exhortation to other teachers. Big brother is watching (literally – the classrooms have CCTV, you know).
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand it, though – because I thought it was something important, set apart as it was under “Special remarks by the director.”I didn’t know what 지양 meant, and as a result, I thought it would end up meaning more than it did. I had to ask someone about the meaning of that vocabulary item – the Korean-English dictionary has “sublation” but… wtf?
“Sublation” is not a “normal” English word – I have an English vocabulary probably in excess of 100,000 words but I never saw that word before in my life. The wiktionary has “removal, taking away” and implies it’s mostly a term for a process in chemistsry. But if one dictionary has a mistake, they all do, because they all pirate from one another and so there is really only one Korean-English dictionary in the universe, regardless of brand, which is a kind of copyright-defying, crowdsourced mess.
other words from meeting agenda
원료 = materials
연구 = inquiry (“plausibility study”? planning?)
평균 = average, arithmetical mean
성적관리 = grade admin
이상 = …and up (greater than)
특이사항 = special subject matter
보충 = replacement, supplement
결석생 = absent / nonattending student
중등부 = middle school division (i.e. of the business)
간담회 = “bull session” according to the dictionary, which I’ve been interpreting to mean “brainstorming meeting” but someone told me it means “open house” (i.e. for parents). huh.
일정 = agenda, plan
조절 = control, regulation
overheard in meeting
준비하다 = prepare, arrange
복사 = copy (how can I forget this word so often?)
타임 = borrowing of the word “time” but in the hagwon business it’s developed a meaning different from English “time”: it’s become a counter meaning “a single class session, of whatever length” so the proper translation is “session” not “time”
과목 = subject, lesson
이만 = this much, so far, to this extent
