This isn’t an aphorism or proverb, but rather a section heading of a handout from a staff-meeting a week or two ago, which was entitled “초등부 강사로서의 나의 역량 자가 진단” (roughly, “self-diagnostic of my abilities as an elementary teacher”).
I bring these Korean language handouts home and over time I study them, if I get the motivation. It’s rough going, but occasionally they offer insights into how my boss is thinking, or at least, how he feels he should be thinking.
The first section heading of this “self-diagnostic” is “강사로서의 자부심을 느끼고 있습니까?” (“do I feel pride / self-confidence as a teacher?”). The problem is that “pride” and “self-confidence” are both offered as translations of 자부심, but I’m not sure they are the same thing.
Does the term mean both? Do these concepts of “pride” or “self-confidence,” in particular, work differently in Western psychology? I would feel comfortable saying I have pride in my teaching, but I couldn’t never fully agree that I have self-confidence in my teaching. Excessive self-confidence in teaching leads to close-mindedness, which is the bane of effective teaching in my opinion. For me, feigned self-confidence is crucial in the classroom, but true self-confidence elusive – and I don’t view this dichotomy as a bad thing.
