lucky 13.
heavy rain. badly upset stomach (maybe due to bibimguksu yesterday rather than radiation per se). took taxi – thought that would never happen? taxis are hard to get in the rain in ilsan. . . but here on time.
good morning, anyway.
Day: August 28, 2013
Caveat: Junior Marxists Club, Karma Chapter
My student Jaeheon, in 6th grade, wrote the below in an essay written to the prompt "How can we make the world better for all humankind?" He gave three things we could do, also including his first thing – free healthcare for everyone in the world – and his third thing – unification of all the world's religions. Both those ideas are patently utopian, but his second thing was literally utopian. I quote (and, as always with student writing, I leave all mistakes and transcribe exactly as written as best I can):
Second, Change the earth to 유토피아 [yu-to-pi-a]. 유토피아 [yu-to-pi-a] is the world that work with self's ability and get the same payment. Think about it when all the people get the same payment their will be no poor and rich also there will no worry about tomorrow so all people can be happy.
If that isn't a rough round-trip-translation (English-Korean-English) of Marx's "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," I'm not sure what is.
When I pointed out to Jaeheon that this was part of the communist program, he seemed deeply disconcerted. He said he had to think about it.
I like students like Jaeheon a lot.