Caveat: IIRTHW Intermission – A Change of Approach

Back before I got my cancer diagnosis, I had been working – on alternate Fridays or something like that – on a little project I was calling IIRTHW (If I Ran the Hagwon). I published [broken link! FIXME] two [broken link! FIXME] parts, but my work on the promised third part was interrupted by the cancer.

In recent weeks, as I've been returning to making some effort at polishing up what was to be the third part of this essay series, I have also decided that I have another, very big problem with continuing the exploration of the chosen theme, in its current style: I keep changing my mind. This is a very grave problem, indeed, but a I suppose it is a common enough bugbear for writers who want to retain their integrity and convey their ideas with sincerity.

My third part was supposed to be either a complete or partial listing of those elements that, in my humble opinion, would constitute "My Ideal Hagwon." Yet each time I would stop working on the list of items and then return to that list later (after some break of a month, or two weeks, or whatever) I keep finding that I don't agree with one or more of the items in my list, or that I want to make some change to the details of one or more items.

This, therefore, calls for a change of strategy in terms of style of presentation. I will not post my Part III here as a blog post, but make it what my blog-host calls a "page." It's exactly like a blog post, except that it's undated – which means that I can unself-consciously return and update it and alter it to my heart's content.

There will therefore be a major caveat attached to the essay: it is and will remain, indefinitely, a "work-in-progress." One major advantage of a blog is that it allows for a sort of "snapshot-in-time" effect with respect to my state-of-mind at any given moment. But with respect to this "Ideal Hagwon" concept, I precisely don't want that effect: I want it to show my current thinking, even as that thinking is evolving (often quite radically) over time.

I'm going to post it this morning, in its current clearly rough-draft state, and then let it refine and evolve over time. Thus, without further fanfare, here is the link to that page-in-progress: [broken link! FIXME] IIRTH Part III.

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In the process of returning to working on this above-mentioned project, I ran across a rather remarkable blog the other day.

It's called wangjangnim.com – essentially, it is a post-a-week about what it's like to run a hagwon, from the perspective of a foreigner (ie. non-Korean) who has a background in business (not education – and that's very noticeable and fascinating).

I'm sure there are, in fact, a large number of blogs and other online materials about what it's like to run an English hagwon, online, but, in my limited efforts to find them, they are 100% in Korean, which makes it pretty rough going for me and my limited Korean competency to wade through. What abound, instead, are blogs by foreigners and gyopos (foreign-educated Koreans) working at hagwon as NETs (native English-speaking teachers). Without exception, these blogs (no doubt including my own! – I'm not elevating myself above the pack, here) are not only rather myopic (not to say downright ignorant) about education theory and language-acquisition research, but also they are in utter denial about the business side realities of the capitalist-based free-for-all that is the Korean private education system, with all its successes and failures.

My IIRTHW posts, above, are an effort to address these shortcomings, at least with respect to my own blogular reality.

I have some minor complaints about wangjangnim.com, but the only one I will comment on at all, here, is the bizarre romanazation of the Korean Language that is implicit in the blog's title: in what phonological universe does 원장님 [wonjangnim = hagwon director] become wangjangnim? But really that's just the trained linguist in me, quibbling unnecessarily. I have a no-doubt annoying punctilliousness with respect to issues of Korean romanization which is probably incomprehensible to most people. [Update 2013-10-04 3:30 pm: the author of wangjangnim.com left a comment (below) letting me know why he chose the name wangjangnim. He said "Wangjangnim = Wongjangnim + Wangja (prince) FYI 🙂 It's a play on words." This makes perfect sense and I feel stupid for not having considered this possibility. So consider my quibble retracted!]

Setting such minor (not to say irrelevant) complaints aside, I will say that from my personal perspective, this is the best blog I have ever seen by a foreigner working in the EFL environment in Korea. It's realisitc, it has a certain subtle, self-deprecating humor, it's informed and careful, and the author clearly has a nuanced perspective both on Korean EFL and on Korean culture. I'm deeply impressed. It may be the first time I've read every single entry of a blog back to its beginning.

Even if I disagree with some of his ideas about what makes a great hagwon, I cannot recommend that blog highly enough. It's deeply thought provoking and has induced a great deal of thought on my part vis-a-vis my own IIRTHW project.