Caveat: Principles & Parameters

Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Before I plow into actually trying to read the book on Chomsky's Minimalism, after having skimmed through the first few pages, I want to record my "before" snapshot:  where do I stand in current understanding and/or lack-of-understanding of contemporary syntactic theory?

I last studied syntactic theory in the early 90's, when I was exposed to John R Taylor's book Linguistic Categorization, which for me personally was deeply influential.  Because of that, though, I already find on page 5 of Understanding Minimalism (by Hornstein et al.) something I find deeply suspect:  "[the Principles and Parameters Theory] now constitutes the consensus view of the overall structure of the language faculty." 

Really?  Maybe… if the definition of "consensus" = "what Chomsky thinks."  Which is not, per se, beyond plausible.  But…. although Chomsky is without a doubt a seminal and key thinker in the field of linguistics, I don't see him as infallible, nor do I see him as the sole source-of-truth.  Am I being overly sensitive to what I have always perceived as an embedded authoritarianism in Chomskian syntax?  Probably.

I have no quibbles with the principles and parameters theory, actually.  It's scientifically trivial, in fact, as long as you leave open what those principles and paramaters might be.  My personal "gut instinct," though, is the principles and parameters in question are not specific to a "language faculty" as Chomsky and his followers have always advocated, but rather instantiations of more general "rules of cognition" that are innate to the human brain by virtue of it's neurological anatomy and chemistry.  Which is to say, language truly is "thinking out loud."  This is not a totally naive view, but it's perhaps not part of the "consensus" in the field, either. 

OK, out of time.  More later.

Caveat: An Enviable Failure

Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

About six months ago, when I was in Japan, I [broken link! FIXME] made the observation that Japan seemed much less "depressed" than one would expect of a country that was in the throes of a two-decades-long economic downturn.  I suggested we look at it as a "sustainable recession."

Now, The Atlantic's James Fallows is on board.  He seems to agree with me:  not that he knows what I wrote.  But I know what he's writing, and in broad terms, he seems to back up what I was observing. He says that if Japan is a failure, it may be the sort of failure we should envy.

Japan may represent a future: where a society can come to terms with – and finally end – the fetishization of never-ending economic growth.

Someone named William J Holstein (to whom I was directed by Fallows) blogs about Asia extensively.  He takes on The Economist's editors love affair with a doom-and-gloom analysis of the Japanese economy, head on.  He begins:  "It is positively surreal to read what the Economist is writing about Japan while actually visiting the country. There is a major disconnect."  Definitely – I've noticed this too, in my loyal consumption of the magazine's content.

His conclusion identifies an ideological engine driving the magazine's mis-analysis.  I'm not sure I completely agree, but I do think it's worth quoting at length, because, again, it recognizes that there are alternatives to a no-holds-barred, economic-growth-at-all-costs "free market" ideology.

Why is the Economist, a normally respected publication, so wrong about Japan? I think it's because the Economist sees itself as the bearer of the free market orthodoxy. If Japan is facing "grim" conditions amid overall "gloom," then the Economist's ideology is correct. No nation can be advanced and sophisticated without embracing "the market." But if Japan is, as I argue, a country that is managing itself very well without accepting the Anglo-Saxon version of capitalism, then the Economist's ideology is faulty. The reform of embracing market reforms does not work for everyone. It is not universal. That very simple idea is what the lads at the Economist cannot allow to take root because it undermines their intellectual legitimacy. So they persist in their doom-and-gloom analysis of Japan–even if it does not even begin to square with the reality on the ground.

A final note, pertaining to South Korea:  I personally think that Korea's economic leadership is watching Japan very closely, and always has been.  And I think the Koreans may recognize that Japan, more than, say, Europe or the US, represents South Korea's "most probable future."  I don't think that would be a bad thing, either.  The main point:  Japan is not the cultural or economic basket-case that the Western media likes to portray.

Caveat: overlooking what their students are halfway good at

Language & Linguistics / Teaching & Methodology

I was in a store yesterday and I noticed the clerk (a young, college-age woman) was studying some rather difficult looking material, with a notebook open to a set of handwritten notes on what looked like a medical topic.  The notes were completely in English, with lots of long words and full sentences, hand-drawn diagrams and charts, all with a neat, miniature penmanship.  Yet she saw me and failed to produce an English sentence, although she clearly wanted to. 

I was struck by the realization (a realization I've had before, too) that although most Koreans exit their primary and secondary school systems still unable to speak English, despite a decade of obligatory English class, nevertheless many do manage to acquire a substantial level of skill in reading and writing.

And then this morning, I found a comment by a Korean (well, I assume the person is Korean, since the screenname used for the comment is "The Korean") on a blog post on problems with English education in Japan and Korea by a blogger named "chrisinsouthkorea."  The comment is worth quoting in its entirety (moreso than the original blog post, which basically says the same thing a thousand vaguely disgruntled foreign teachers on a thousand blogs have said about English education in Korea).  It's quite insightful and worth seeing for anyone teaching English in Korea.

I would suggest that English test should be strongly focused on reading and writing. (Maybe you included these concepts in "comprehension ability.") But my main point is that speaking is a really overrated ability. And a part of the reason why it is so overrated is because (I trust you won't misunderstand my intention when I say this) NSETs [Native Speaker English Teachers] tend to focus on their own frustration with being unable to communicate with their students such that they overlook what their students are halfway good at.

I don't [think] NSETs really get to see the practical application of all that English education in Korea. Broadly speaking, (of course this could differ individually,) Korean people learn English so that they can work at a company that deals with foreign clients. After all, Korea is one of the most export-dependent country in the world. They do NOT learn English to make small talks with Anglophones. In this context, reading and writing with high-level vocabulary and grammatical structure is the most critical skill to learn, not speaking.

There's another point, worth adding:  reading and writing skills are much easier for non-preschool-age humans to acquire than speaking skills.  Witness my own substantially better competence with written Korean over spoken Korean, or consider the fact that although I can enjoy reading a novel in French, for example, I'd be hard pressed to have even a basic-level conversation in the language.  And although I can get the gist of a newspaper article in Dutch, I don't even know how to say "hello."

Caveat: Land’s End

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

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[broken link! FIXME] [broken link! FIXME] P1050563 Yesterday my friend Mr Kim and I went hiking at Duryunsan (두룐산), which is in Haenam County about an hour and a half's drive south of Gwangju. Originally, we'd discussed taking an overnight to Song-i-do, but Mr Kim couldn't do an overnight, so we did this instead.

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After our hike, we drove another 30 minutes to a place called Ttangkkeutmaeul (땅끝마을), which translates pretty literally as Land's End Village.  That's because the spot is the southernmost extremity of the Korean mainland.  There are thousands of islands scattered in the area farther south, including two large islands, Wando and Jindo, that are connected by bridge – so nowadays Ttangkkeut is no longer the farthest south one can go by car, but historically, Ttangkkeut is the "tip" of the Korean Peninsula. 

It was a good day.  There were a lot of steep and rocky spots.  In Korea, all "up-the-mountain" hiking trails are substantially engineered, but this one included a number of spots where one had to use attached hand-holds, hanging ropes and chains to cling to the sides of pretty steep (not to say sheer) rock faces. I always have a little bit of acrophobia in such situations of exposed heights, but I'm pretty good at just "dealing with it" and pushing along.

So here are some pictures. 

I saw some jang-seung (장승 – left and right, above).  I love jang-seung – I want to become a jang-seung sculptor in my next career, I think

There was a cheesy stone lion (courtesy Lion's International) at the park entrance.

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Just starting out, we met a group of senior citizens who were starting their day with hefty doses of purple makkeolli (rice beer flavored with some kind of root or flower, I forgot to write down the name).

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They insisted I drink with them, and eat seafood jeom pancakes and kimchi.  One has to comply with such requests – it's social obligation.  So… two big bowls later (makkeolli is traditionally drunk from bowls, not cups), I began the hike in a bit of a drunken haze.

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At the base of the mountain, there was 대흥사 [dae-heung-sa = Daeheung Temple].

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I saw a scary demon (or was it a portrait of a new member of anger-rap group Insane Clown Posse?  Hard to tell…).

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I saw some bodhisattvas (I think they were bodhisattvas) riding on animals.

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I saw Siddhartha thinking about his deceased parents.

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About halfway up the mountain, we found a construction area near a small hermitage (암), affiliated with the temple.

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There was a mysterious backhoe.  A construction worker told us he drove it there.  But we'd traversed some very rocky and un-drivable paths to get to that point, and so we were sceptical.  A monk later told us the construction worker had lied – the backhoe had been delivered with a cargo helicopter.

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There was a cute, but rather grumpy, old temple dog.

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At this hermitage, we found a 미륵 [mi-reuk = Maitreya, which is "future buddha," but also is used to refer to a statue of buddha].  It was a big, ancient one, enclosed in a little temple/shelter structure to protect it from further erosion from the elements.  It was really awesome to see.  It was my favorite part of the hike.

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The view from a helipad.

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Hints of fall in the foliage.

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A difficult, steep stretch, where I had to hang on a rope and pull myself up through a hole in the rocks.

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Some panoramic views.  Pardon the specks of dirt visible on the camera lens.  Looking east.

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Looking southeast – toward Wando, I think.

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A summit marker.

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Mountain-top-deep-thinker.

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In this picture, I tried to capture a little bird that Mr Kim told me was rare.  You can barely see it, in the lower left quadrant.  But I liked the sort of abstract look of the face of rock that the picture captured, so I decided to put it up.

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Here is Mr Kim, in among some trees.

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This is a charming green moth that was lurking on a lavender-colored flower.

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The mountain is supposedly a reclining buddha.  So there are multiple peaks:  head, belly, feet.  I think this is buddha's head, but looking toward the chin from the valley of his neck/chest area.

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Here is a natural stone arch that we went under, after going up some very steep, steel stairs hung on a cliffside.

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Clowning around on said steel stairs.

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Here is Mr Kim, having one of his long conversations with random strangers, that he likes to enjoy.  I think he likes to "brag" about his foreign friend, a little bit – I'm kind of a walking, smiling status symbol, for him.  I don't mind – he's very intelligent, and, to the extent we succeed in communicating, interesting to talk to.  We both learn a lot of each other's respective languages, although we are often just as exhausted, mentally, at the end of the day, as physically.

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A panoramic view from the peak, looking eastish.

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The obligatory top-of-the-mountain victory pose.

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Here are some people we met.  I mix up the various groups of hikers we meet.  This group, or another one,were a church group who served us kimchi, apples, makkeolli (rice beer) and coffee flavored hard-candies:  lunch snack of champion mountain climbers everywhere!

Sharing food in the middle of nowhere is a deeply embedded part of Korean culture, I've come to believe.  My friend Mr Kim will literally walk up to just-met strangers and begin a conversation with something like, hey, do you have any kimbap?  Or they will greet us with, hey, get over here and drink some makkeolli – and here's some kimchi to go with it.

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A little monk's hermitage (암) we encountered on the way down.

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The painted wooden panels on the temple building at the hermitage were amazing.  I love these things, and they're easy to find, all over Korea.

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Two pictures of boats at Ttangkkeut.

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Here is a man parking his boat at a dock where my friend Mr Kim bought an octopus for his wife.  That seems like a really romantic Korean thing to do:  buy a fresh, wiggly octopus for one's loved one.  The fisherman's Korean was incomprehensible to me.  And he had a young, Philippine wife standing on the dock, assisting, and her Korean was even worse than mine, and I wondered… how do they communicate?  Is communication really even a part of their relationship?  It's very common for rural Korean men, these days, to find "foreign brides" – because all the Korean women go to university and go live in the cities, wanting nothing to do with farmers and fishermen.  A very interesting cultural phenomenon.

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Here is a tiny scrap of rock with some very Korean-looking trees clambering around on it, just off the coast of Ttangkkeut at the ferry terminal (well, really just a chunk of concrete where the boats can disgorge their vehicles).

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A bright half-moon over a tree and rock at Ttangkkeut, at dusk.

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A big rock that says "땅끝 .  한반도최남단" [ttang-kkeut.  han-ban-do-choe-nam-dan = Land's End.  Korean Peninsula's Southernmost Column (i.e. column of rock on the beach there, I think)]

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This morning, I awoke at 6:40, which felt decadent, given I normally get up an hour earlier.  My legs are a bit sore.  There were dumptrucks rumbling, roosters crowing, and goats bleating, outside my window.  For breakfast, I had some coffee and some leftover cake that a student's mom gifted me with, last week.

Caveat: Metahomophobia – or, going out on a limb

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Over the years, I have almost completely avoided commentary on DADT, marriage equality, and on broader gender identity issues.  I have done so because I'm pretty sure that my views on these issues tend to offend (or at the least, make uncomfortable) both liberals and conservatives, activists on the left and right, equally.  I'm a "deep libertarian" on these issues.   Here're a few short paragraphs, in an effort to try to summarize my beliefs and thoughts.

There is no "default" gender identity in a given human being – we each have innate tendencies, perhaps, but gender identity is something we construct as part of our socialization.  I believe in nurture over nature, I suppose – with the following caveat:  we don't have much conscious control over how that nurture works out – either as children growing up ourselves, nor as parents and mentors guiding those children.  I think the whole "gender identity" question would be very well-served by completely eliminating such broad-brush-strokes categories as "gay" or "straight" and recognizing that it works more like a complex, multi-dimensional rainbow spectrum of preferences, interests, likes, dislikes, fears, discomforts, etc., all under the constraints of thousands of years of evolved cultural expectations. 

I hate such "typing" as is exemplified in declaring "I'm straight" or "I'm gay" – I view it as unscientific and ultimately naive.  There's little difference between that kind of "typing" and the strangely one-dimensional views of people who used to go around saying things like: "there are four races of humans:  yellow, white, red, black."  Get real:  it's a continuum.  The first instance of miscegenation falsifies the whole construct.  Likewise, the first instance of genuinely queer gender identity (as in the person who checks "other" on the form) falsifies the gay-straight dialectic.

On the question of marriage equality, my prescription is stunningly simple, and consists of trying for a rational answer to the following question:  what business does the government have in anyone's marriage?  Get the government out of the business of recognizing marriage, altogether.  If two people want to derive benefits of partnership (survivorship, parenting privileges, etc.) let them form a business partnership using civil business laws that have nothing to do with cultural tradition or churches or temples or ordination, etc.

On the question of DADT, I have always been annoyed with what I perceived as a certain shallowness and misunderstanding, on the part of critics, of the human psychology behind the desperation evident in military's insistence on DADT.  Finally, someone has nailed it (see this editorial in the NYT). Dale Carpenter writes, succinctly:  "Gays are to be excluded, not because of their own merits, but because we fear that some people around them might not be able to handle the truth.  [DADT] is not a judgment about gays at all, but about heterosexuals."  Put another way, it's a fear of homophobia.  Homophobophobia?  Metahomophobia?

Caveat: 8) 조상님의 은혜를 잊고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

Buddhism & Zen / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

This is #8 out of a series of [broken link! FIXME] 108 daily Buddhist affirmations.

…
6. [broken link! FIXME] 나의 몸을 소중하게 여기지 않고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, not regarding my body as something dear.”
7. [broken link! FIXME] 나의 진실한 마음을 저버리고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, foresaking my true heart.”
8. 조상님의 은혜를 잊고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

I would read this eighth affirmation as:  “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting the favors of our ancestors.”
The Bodhidharma was a 5th century Buddhist evangelist who traveled from India to China.  He is credited with being the first major proponent of “zen,” within the “great path” type of Buddhism, called Mahayana.  I’m reading a collection of some of his works translated into English by someone called Red Pine (I’m not sure what kind of name this is – that’s what it says on the cover).
In a section called the “Bloodstream Sermon,” Bodhidharma says:

The mind is the buddha, and the buddha is the mind.  Beyond the mind there’s no buddha, and beyond the buddha there’s no mind.    If you think there’s a buddha beyond the mind, where is he?  There’s no buddha beyond the mind, so why envision one?   You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

 

Caveat: It all comes down to education

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Teaching & Methodology

Which is what I already believed.  But, anecdotally, at least, Nicholas Kristof's recent editorial in NYT really hammers the fact home.  I don't always find what he writes particularly compelling or even interesting, but when he editorializes on the issue of how good and universal education can transform societies, he's spot-on. 

Good and universal education are way more important than "democracy," in promoting world peace.  That may be a fact that makes people uncomfortable, especially Westerners accustomed to believing that the former is somehow possible only with the latter.  But the facts "on the ground" seem to be irrefutable, to me.

The problem, of course, is that universal education takes a long time to produce the effect – in essence, an entire generation.  Whereas "democracy" can be "imposed" (via some type of election or other) almost immediately.  It suits our desire for quick results.  But getting people to vote in "failed states" (e.g Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia) solves almost nothing.  Building schools and making sure they're used will, in about a generation, solve a great deal.

Caveat: RIP Hwang Jang-yeop

Life in Korea / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Hwang Jang-yeop (황장엽) recently died, I read in the news.  This man was the highest ranking member of the North Korean government ever to have defected, having done so in 1997.  He was notable as having been both Kim Il-sung's and later Kim Jeong-il's "ideology advisor."  In the 1970's, he was chairman of the North Korean parliament.

In fact, he was basically the key author of the Juche concept, which is North Korea's official state ideology (in opposition to Marxist-Leninism, Stalinism, or Communism, which are inaccurate terms often applied to the regime in the West).  Hwang Jang-yeop defected not because he'd become disillusioned with the Juche concept that he'd authored, but rather because he felt the North Korean regime was only paying lip service to it, and that the Kims (father and son) were in essence guilty of having implemented feudalism rather than any type of communism, Juche or otherwise. 

He was originally embraced by the South Koreans when he came over, but during the presidencies of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Mu-hyeon, with their "sunshine policy" toward the North, he was marginalized, as those governments made efforts to avoid antagonizing Kim Jeong-il.

Caveat: Detention

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

Yesterday was a hard day.  My co-teacher Ji-eun and I have had a lot of problems with the sixth grade regular classes, behaviorally.  We decided to try out an English "detention" concept for misbehaving kids. 

First detention class was yesterday.  Mixed results.  To be expected.  How to proceed?  Cogitating…

Caveat: Elephant Speaks Korean?

Found Online / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

[broken link! FIXME] 250px-Spectrogram_-iua- This is interesting, I saw in Huffington Post that South Korea has a talking elephant.  What a strange thing.  I wonder how the elephant manages the difficult vowels?  Haha… I bet all vowels are difficult, for an elephant?   Acoustically, vowels are very complex sounds (see acoustic spectrogram of 3 "simple" vowels, at left).

Caveat: From the department of nutso tautologies

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

"no one who has ever not hired an illegal immigrant through their companies, would not in any way be responsible for the hiring of an illegal immigrant" – rightwinger Lou Dobbs, defending himself incoherently against accusations that he employed illegal immigrants.  As best I can tell, through the twisted multiple negative syntax, this is a logical tautology, not unlike saying:  "someone who has hired an illegal immigrant has hired an illegal immigrant."  Maybe that's what he meant?

Caveat: 7) 나의 진실한 마음을 저버리고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Is this really telling me to forsake my true heart?  Or did I get something wrong?  This is #7 out of what looks to be a series of 108 daily Buddhist affirmations.

…

5. [broken link! FIXME] 나는 누구인가, 참 나는 어디있는가를 망각한 채 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting wherever I may be, whoever I may be.” 
6. [broken link! FIXME] 나의 몸을 소중하게 여기지 않고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, not regarding my body as something dear.”

7. 나의 진실한 마음을 저버리고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

I would read this seventh affirmation as:  “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, foresaking my true heart.”
I feel very tired today.  Exhausted from pushing hard over the weekend, maybe.  Not feeling motivated, but I had dinner with my friend Mr Kim at a gulbi joint in Beopseong – this was actually the very first time I’ve eaten in a gulbi joint in Beopsong, despite the fact that I’ve gone through there every single working day since starting here, and some non-working days as well.  The gulbi itself was pretty good.  I wasn’t so into the banchan, this evening.  Hard to judge if it was the quality on offer, or if I was just in an anti-banchan mood.

Caveat: Minimalist Zoom

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

It was a strange sort of whirlwind weekend, I guess.  Zooming up to Ilsan and back in just under 36 hours … was fun, but I feel tired.  Plowing through a 400 page novel added to the slight sense of vertigo.

I had fun at the event, though mostly I was people watching, rather than interacting.  I received gifts – I think Koreans like to give gifts at their parties to the guests – often cheesy, but still well-intentioned.  This is a trait, if I recall correctly, that Koreans share with hobbits.  Hmm… I mean that in a nice way.

I shall never have to buy a hand towel, in this country, as long as I can be invited to a social event every few months.  And this time my hand towel was arranged to look like a cake (left, below).  Here's a picture of my haul of gifts.

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I also got some tteok (rice cake – right).  It comes in many different forms, but I love it when it's just these featureless bricks of slightly sweet, slightly grainy, sticky rice meal.  Maybe like a cross between polenta and elmer's glue.  It's perhaps one of the most abstract foods imaginable.  The sort of thing that one day will come out "food dispensers" on a spaceship.  And it's delicious.

And I won a pretty nice bowl (with lid – center), too, in a sort of contest.  I won it because I was the person who had "traveled farthest" to come to the event – two times over, counting, on the one hand, my status as sole foreigner, and therefore technically from outside of Korea, and on the other hand, my having come just that morning from Jeollanam, which was pretty far even within Korea.

Speaking of towels, when I was in my hotel room this morning, getting ready to leave, I absently tossed my towel down on the coffee table, and look what it did:

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It stood up like that, for no apparent reason but its own inherent stiffness.  Almost eerie – I've never seen a towel do that.  

I finished reading the novel, Life of Pi.  I don't know if I like how it ends – I didn't find it necessarily uplifting.  Just vaguely ambiguous.   But it's still a pretty good book.  And it's the first time I've read a novel straight through, that way, in years.

I stopped by the Kyobo Mungo in Gangnam, which has, in my opinion, the best selection of English language books I've seen anywhere in Korea.  I browsed for a while.  I bought a book on syntactic theory.  I'm not sure what made me do this.  I had been reflecting the other day, on my very strange tendency to derive some kind of weird, abstract yet at the same time visceral pleasure in my contemplation of the most abstruse aspects of Korean grammar, and thinking, well, that's always the part I liked best about studying linguistics, too.  So, what the heck?  Maybe I should get a book on general syntax and see if it's interesting to me, after so many years.

If nothing else, it will provide me with an opportunity to become annoyed with Chomsky again, who still seems to dominate syntactic theory, even now – he's moved on from GB ("Government and Binding" Theory [take that, Foucault!] which I spent a small amount of time with in a graduate-level syntax class back in the late 1980's, when it was the latest concoction to emerge from Chomsky's brain) to something called "minimalism."  Hah. 

Caveat: Hantucky; Hanhattan

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

If Yeonggwang County is Hantucky, then Ilsan may be Hanhattan.  I'm playing with neologisms, of course:  "Han" just means "Korea." 

Hanhattan has miles of wide, square streets, high rises, high density… with broad, well-designed parks.   Anyway.  I had a weird epiphany, walking along, just now, coming back to my hotel:  since first coming to Ilsan, I've had trouble remembering the name of Ilsan's "main drag."  I think of it, in my mind, as "Broadway."  But I've always had trouble retaining its "real" name.  And then today, I looked up at a sign, and saw it spelled out, and suddenly it made perfect sense to me:  중앙로 [jung ang no] – it simply means Central Avenue.  How freaking obvious!  It only took me 37 months to figure it out.  I always thought it was some obscure directional place name, like so many Korean roads and streets.

Here's a picture of Central Avenue, along a stretch between Jeongbalsan and Madu stations.  It looks like this for most of its 8 kilometer length.  High rises and big stores and shops and apartment buildings the whole way.

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Here's a picture I took earlier, when Ilsan at Jeongbalsan plaza was feeling exceptionally newyorky.  The horse-drawn carriage for tourists was the clincher.  These have been appearing here and there in Korea, recently.  I'm not sure what to think of it – it's clearly imported from the West.  But it's kind of cool, too.

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Here's a picture from my friend Curt's son's 돌 [dol] – special first birthday party.  Curt and his wife, daughter, son…

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I also got to see former coworker Grace, as well as some of Curt's more extended family, including his mom (who I met early last year when I went with Curt to his hometown at Jangsu).  And I got to see Pete (not Peter S. nor Peter J., but yet a different Pete), who was a former boss that I tangled with, back when I worked at the LinguaForum hagwon in the spring of 2008.  He seemed shocked to see I still was in Korea, and dumbfounded to hear I was working in a public school.  Well… Oh well.

Here is a cute little girl who was deeply enamored of her party balloons.

[broken link! FIXME] [broken link! FIXME] P1050544 
 

Caveat: Express Trip to Ilsan

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Wow.  My secret plan to come to Ilsan in record time worked perfectly – I made it in under 5 hours.  The one time, before, when I tried to do a trip direct from Yeonggwang to Ilsan, it took more like 6 and half, because going into Seoul and then changing to the subway seems to end up taking up a lot of time. 

So this time, I bought a ticket on the 9:30 AM airport express bus, direct from Yeonggwang bus terminal to Incheon Airport.  This bypasses the worst of Seoul traffic and congestion.  Then I took a "local" airport bus from the airport to Ilsan.  Ilsan is, in fact, much closer to Incheon airport than either of them are to downtown Seoul. 

I took along a novel to read, The Life of Pi.  I've been procrastinating on reading this novel for something close to a decade, I think.  Maybe not that long.  Anyway, it was always out there on the "to read" list.  In my bus ride, I managed to plow through the first half of the book.

As Pi confronts the hyena on the lifeboat, I look out the bus window to watch the golden rice fields tranform into the endless tracts of highrise apartments, south of Incheon.  Next thing, I'm looking out the bus window from the top of the bridge over to the island where the airport is.  The sky and water is blue, the Incheon skyline is littered with cranes.  There are boats sitting on the mudflats, while the world's commerce passes by in shipping channels.  And then I see the giant stainless steel penis-looking-statue-thing that sits at the gateway to Incheon international airport – anyone who's come in and out of Incheon a few times knows what I'm talking about.  I imagine it's actually supposed to represent some kind of abstraction of "flight," but frankly, it's pretty darn blatant, in my opinion.  It's Korea's "hello" to the world, I guess.

I jump off the bus at the airport, run down the escalator, and in 5 minutes flat I'm sitting on a #3300 bus bound for Ilsan.  Another few chapters race by, and I barely ring the buzzer in time for the driver to stop at Baekseok.  I've decided to stick with the familiar, and therefore I've opted to stay at a hotel I already know about:  it's basically outside the Baekseok subway entrance.  It's not the cheapest – but the cheapest in Ilsan are seedy love motels.  This is maybe a few grades above that – no lodging is cheap in this part of metro Seoul.  It's cool – it'll be a luxury weekend.  I know this hotel, and know it's reliable, right?  Internet and giant TV in the room, and a lovely view of the Baekseok Costco.  Haha. 

I have come to Ilsan to attend the first birthday party of my friend's son.  This is a big deal in Korea – it's celebrated with a rental of a reception hall, and has the feel of a wedding.  I attended [broken link! FIXME] one, once before.  I still need to find something to give as a gift – I'm not sure I have it in me to get something conventional (i.e. the expected baby clothes or shoes).  Maybe something slightly unconventional, instead?  Not sure how much to stretch the social boundaries.

Caveat: El Desafío

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics

Hace 16 años estuve en Patagonia.  Recientemente (re)encontré en el web un lugar que recuerdo muy vívidamente:  El Desafío es una especie de "folk art" que se ubica en el pueblo de Gaiman en el valle del río de Chubut.  Un parque construido completamente de materiales reciclados: ladrillos, botellas de vidrio y plástico, autos rotos, toneladas de basura.  De hecho, resulta en una clase de "theme park."  Algún día, gustaría regresar al valle de Chubut, con sus raices en las culturas galesa e italiana, su belleza desolada;  es uno de mis lugares favoritos en Sudamérica. 

"Un desafío a la solemnidad, a la falta de amor, a la inercia, a la incapacidad. Un canto a la vida, al optimismo, al humor, a la creatividad"

[broken link! FIXME] Parque-el-desafio.8108.large_slideshow

[broken link! FIXME] PICT5808

Caveat: 당신은 특☆해요!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Life in Korea / Teaching & Methodology / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

It was one of those miraculous, happy days, when putting up with all the sociopathic administrator bullshit becomes totally worth it.  What I mean to say, is the kids came through.  They delivered happiness and joy.
One student wrote to me:   당신은 특☆해요!  (and explaining that ☆ is read as 별 = “star”), hence “당신은 특별해요” [dang-sin-eun teuk-byeol-hae-yo = you are special].  Aww, shucks.  I thought that’s what teachers were supposed to write to their students, not vice versa.
Then, I was in the courtyard, with about five minutes before having to go upstairs to the third grade.  A group of third graders saw me, and said, oh, teacher, you must come to class.  They grabbed me by my hands and hauled me up the stairs as if I was an unruly child, and then when I got there, things were still clearly in a state of recess, so I said, why am I here?
“Fun!” was the chorus.
In another third grade class, I was going through my beginning-of-class routine – I ask students (not always every single one, but at least half, one by one) “how are you?”  I try to get them to vary their answers, and not always use the pat “I am fine” that they all seem to learn early on.  And whatever their answer, I occasionally ask “why?” and try to get them to give some information as to why they feel the way that they do.
So… I asked one student, “how are you?”
“Oh!  Very happy,” calm, but grinning.
“Why?”
“Because you.”  And she pointed at me.  I almost blushed in self-consciousness.
That was pleasing.
Finally, I was in my evening “gifted students’ class” which is at the county education office here in Yeonggwang.  I have about 22 smart – and smart-alecky – but not always focused sixth graders.  Things had been feeling a little bit slow.  But then I introduced them to my Jeopardy quiz show concept.  And they ran with it.
We had to modify the rules a little bit, because it was such a large group (22 contestants is a lot, to have to consult each student’s answer individually).  But it worked very well:  I had them scrawling down answers on scraps of paper and throwing them at me, I would read their answers and say “good” or “bad.”  I would award money (yes, my ubiquitous play money) appropriately.  And the kids started to have a huge amount of fun.  They would write truly funny things when they didn’t know the answer.  I would read them in my best game-show-host demeanor, and then begin laughing uncontrollably and toss the scrap of paper with the answer back into the crowd.  It had the same atmospheric as one of those always playing Korean comedy game shows.  It felt very successful.  Everyone was laughing.  No one noticed it was time to leave.
I walked home and passed the pizza place where some of the expats meet on Fridays… I didn’t really even realize I was walking along that particular street.  The owner saw me and leaned out the door, “안녕하세요.”  I answered in kind, “예, 안녕하세요.”

Caveat: Objectivism

Language & Linguistics / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

"Objectivism: the spongy white bread at the Great Buffet of Human Ideas" – John Scalzi, in his screedtastic bloggings on the topic of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  I would add:  spongy white bread is delicious and comforting, but not good for you, and may contribute to health problems if not to an early death.

Perhaps this is what Scalzi has in mind.  I think I can agree with a large proportion of what he's saying, which is hard for me to find among people who actually enjoy Rand's writing.  His main insight:  Rand writes "nerd revenge porn" – which is why fans of Rand are mostly to be found somewhere on the Aspergers spectrum.  I will not be so proud as to deny I might be along there somewhere, myself.

My main thought on being a nerd:  being a nerd is like being an acoholic or a drug addict – you cannot be cured, but you can be recovering.  I am a recovering nerd.  As long as I accept this, I can make progress.  Rand's writing is a different approach:  it says that being a nerd is holy, and there's nothing to recover from.  In essence, it denies the normality of human collective social experience.  Rand is to being a nerd as William S. Burroughs is to being a herion addict.  Personally, I think both are wonderful writers.  But I don't think they're offering viable life-philosophies.  It's fantasy.

Caveat: 6) 나의 몸을 소중하게 여기지 않고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다

Buddhism & Zen / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

 
“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, not regarding my body as something dear.”
The parallelism continues.  Maybe, at this rate, I’ll figure out what the grammar is trying to do.  Out of [broken link! FIXME] 108 affirmations, I’m now on number six.
 

…

4. [broken link! FIXME] 나는 어디서 왔는가, 어디로 갈 것인가를 생각하지 않고 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds  lived, wherever I think I may have come from, wherever I think I may go to.”
5. [broken link! FIXME] 나는 누구인가, 참 나는 어디있는가를 망각한 채 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting wherever I may be, whoever I may be.”
6. 나의 몸을 소중하게 여기지 않고 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

I would read this sixth affirmation as:  “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, not regarding my body as something dear.”
The first clause seems to literally say, “and not regarding my body preciously.”  I settled on the above both with a mind to keeping the parallelism with the previous two affirmations, and to try to make sense of it.  I’m not sure that I didn’t take too many liberties with the meaning, though.

Caveat: X

Found Online / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Not a perfect man.  But a truly great American:  liberty and justice for all – "By any means necessary."

Malcolm X. Oxford Union Debate, Dec. 3 1964 from Jason Patterson on Vimeo.

I saw this video posted on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog.  Some commenters remarked on the parallelism between X's rhetoric and the neo-constitutionalist talk of tea-party types.  One commenter, however, made the difference quite clear, and stated it eloquently and simply:

There's such a thing as a right to rebellion, and the rhetoric of revolution is always at hand as a tool. But the right to rebellion requires that your rebellion be right.

Caveat: The Yeonggwang Culture & Language Gang

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea

The name sounds very ambitious.  I suppose anytime one tries to form a club or social grouping, that's rather ambitious.  I've been working on this for a month or two.  I guess I'm hoping we can have an institution of "foreigners" in the Yeonggwang area who meet to study a little bit, find out more about the culture or language without the overwhelming aspect of trying to do so with actual Koreans. 

We've been meeting every Tuesday.  One day, [broken link! FIXME] we made kimbap.  Another time, we watched a movie.  Each class, we try to talk a little bit about the language – but everyone's at a different level, so it doesn't always go smoothly, in that respect.  

Today, only two people (along with myself) showed up.  We sat in the Paris Baguette (a Korean chain bakery store, about the closest Yeonggwang gets to cafe culture) by the bus terminal and drank some coffee and talked about verbs for a while. 

I hope the group can be successful, but it's hard building any kind of expat community on any kind of basis, here, because there are so few, and interests are so diverse.  A guy named Jim has done a fabulous job with his Friday night pizza & beer gatherings, and I often go to those, too.  But I was trying for something that would provide some group encouragement and motivation for the language study – I figured even though I was more advanced, I would nevertheless benefit from a motivational standpoint.  And I have.

Having so few people able and interested in participating is a little bit disappointing.  But … 아자 아자… I hope this can work.

Caveat: Metamoderation

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

"Moderation in all things. Including moderation." – Mark Twain

I think I've found a new favorite quote.  Now, to work with implementation – I'm actually really not that good at moderation – I've always had a degree of "all or nothing" about my personality.  Hence this Twainian metamoderation seems likely to be exceptionally challenging.

But I've been thinking a lot about habits, lately, and about bad habits and good habits.   Small things – eating well, exercising, getting work done rather than procrastinating, mostly abstaining from alcohol but not being a teetotaler, etc.  I watch myself, over time:  I build up a habit, good or bad, and then tear it down again.

I found written in my private journal, a few days ago, the following disconcerting observation (or was I attempting poetry?):  "I slip into and out of my private dysfunctions with a great deal of grace."

Caveat: 5) 나는 누구인가, 참 나는 어디있는가를 망각한 채 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다

Buddhism & Zen / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting wherever I may be, whoever I may be.”
Fortunately, there is a lot of parallelism, from affirmation to affirmation.  As a consequence, I could rely on the hard work invested in making sense of the fourth one to try to sort out this next one.

…

3. [broken link! FIXME] 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
4. [broken link! FIXME] 나는 어디서 왔는가, 어디로 갈 것인가를 생각하지 않고 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.
     “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds  lived, wherever I think I may have come from, wherever I think I may go to.”

5. 나는 누구인가, 참 나는 어디있는가를 망각한 채 살아 온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

I would read the fifth affirmation (with the same reservations and caveats as the last one’s) as:  “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived, forgetting wherever I may be, whoever I may be.”

I’m still not comfortable with the connection between the main clause (second part of sentence, “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds lived”) and the preceding clause (first part, “forgetting …”) – not in this affirmation nor in my translation of the last one.  But I don’t really see how it works – is the first clause subordinate or coordinate, or is it a clause standing as some kind of noun or adjective modifying or modified by “lived”?

Caveat: (bio-)diversity

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / Science & SciFi

New York City is justifiably famous for being one the most diverse places in the world, in human/cultural terms.  But it turns out that the city is equally notable for its biodiversity, according to an article in New York magazine (that I found out about in Tom Scocca's blog).  Partly, it seems that it's not just humans that land in New York City as immigrants and find the city a hosptitable place – the population of "invasive species" is huge.  But it all seems to sort of work.  Kind of just like the human experiment called NYC.

Interesting.

I read about things like this.  I reflect on the complex coexistence of nature and urbanism that I see in a country like South Korea (which I read is the second most densely populated country in the world, after Bangladesh – if you take city-states such as Singapore and Monaco out of the running).  I begin to wonder if those "population alarmists," who feel that the world is doomed due to human overpopulation, are completely wrong.  Human population is, without a doubt, radically altering ecosystems – including, of course, global climate change.  But… that doesn't mean that these radically altered ecosystems will necessarily "collapse" or be unsustainable.

I guess, when you get right down to it, I'm not a apocalypticist, but rather a transhumanist, in futurist matters.

Caveat: Additional Pictures From Yesterday

Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

… from my hike up Naejangsan.

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Caveat: Hiking up, hiking down, and then it rained

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

I went on a great hike with my friend Mr Kim, today, at 내장산 [naejangsan].  Up the mountain, and down again, pretty fast (about 4 hours).  Rain threatened, and then, as we were arriving at the bottom, raindrops.  We sat under a canvas awning in a vacant restaurant in the little tourist ville at the entrance to the park area, and ate 전 [jeon = Korean egg and vegetable pancake] and 김치찌깨 [kimchijjikkae = kimchi stew].  And it rained.  It was beautiful, and very relaxing.

Here is a picture from the inevitable temple-at-the-bottom-of-the-mountain we stopped at.  And a picture of me at the restaurant.  I'll post more pictures tomorrow.

[broken link! FIXME] P1050462

[broken link! FIXME] P1050522

Caveat: Fascinatinger

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Teaching & Methodology

"I try to make things fascinatinger." – Ira Glass (host of NPR's "This American Life" show).

My thought:  the key to life is to stay interested.  That's where living in a foreign country and teaching children come in – they keep me pretty interested, even if things aren't always easy or perfect or convenient.

I have begun to really enjoy my first graders, even though I have yet to have a "good" class with them – they're so unruly, so chaotic, so difficult to calm down and control even for a few minutes.  Their picture will be included in a definition of the expression: "…like herding cats." 

So why am I enjoying them?  Hmm… I think it comes down to the same reason I enjoy trying to learn Korean – the sheer perverse difficulty of the undertaking, in and of itself, is what I enjoy.

I see the little ones, my first graders, filtering into the classroom, and I watch myself carefully.  What am I doing that "works"?  What am I doing that "doesn't work"?  How does the dynamic among the children inevitably result in milling, leaping, sitting-on-the-kid-next-door, shrieking, impossible-to-control chaos?

Caveat: Coleslaw after conformity

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

I keep craving coleslaw.  It's not like I'm not getting enough cabbage – my two daily doses of kimchi, and all that.  Fortunately, ingredients for passable coleslaw are easy to come by – unlike some things I crave, like Mexican food, which have ingredients that are downright impossible to come by.

So I made some coleslaw.  You know, chopped cabbage, carrots…  I like to add some chopped apple, for the tart sweetness, and maybe some raisins.  I have some "coleslaw dressing" which is basically something mayonnaise-like that Koreans apparently use.  But I also have some horseradish sauce, which gives a nice flavor.  And a shake of vinegar.  My only peculiar innovation:  I add some "drinking yogurt" (which is always sweetened and flavored in its Korean variety – but that sweetness can be a nice offset in the coleslaw, I guess).  It's pretty good.

Yesterday was a strange day at work.  I had no classes – the third grade was doing some special book-report-festival (is it possible to have a book report festival?).  But I ended up extremely busy, since Ms Ryu asked me to do practice JET speaking tests.  Fortunately, I was prepared and experienced in doing such a thing, so it went quite smoothly, and I spent the day asking high-end students questions and scoring the competence of their answers.

Then, in the afternoon, we were working hard to meet more of the vice principal's arbitrary demands for making our new classroom adequate to his expectations – putting military-style (meaning very very very dull and uniform) labels on everything, and making sure nothing in the room looks too personalized or fun – god forbid our new, high-tech classroom looking like a warm, welcoming place. 

So I tried to put myself into an army mindset and just line everything up… pretending, in my mind, that some high-level colonel was going to come a-inspectin'.  Probably, this isn't far from the truth – the power plant bigwigs that are paying for all this remodelling are bound to come around at some point, soon, to see how the school's spending their money.  And they're nuclear power plant officials – they're going to like seeing lots of sterile uniformity – it will match their expectations for order and good design.  So, actually, I have some small sympathy for the vice principal's position.  But that doesn't mean he needs to be so… inhumane.

Caveat: 4) 나는 어디서 왔는가, 어디로 갈 것인가를 생각하지 않고 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다

Buddhism & Zen / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

“I bow in repentance of any misdeeds  lived, wherever I think I may have come from, wherever I think I may go to.”
This time, the translation was painful.

…
2. 지극한 마음으로 부처님 법에 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Buddha Dharma [Law of Buddha] with all my heart.”
3. 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
4. 나는 어디서 왔는가, 어디로 갈 것인가를 생각하지 않고 살아온 죄를 참회하며 절합니다.

I would read the fourth affirmation (very tentatively) as:  “I bow in repentance of any misdeeds  lived, wherever I think I may have come from, wherever I think I may go to.” 
Wow, I can’t even begin to really understand what’s going on with these verbs – they’re stacked deeper than a Duluth snowdrift in January.  And I may not have gotten it right – I deliberately have not gone out to try to find a translation.  The Googlator gets it stunningly wrong:  “I came from and where do you go from thinking you have lived without prostrate in repentance.”  But knowing that Google is wrong isn’t the same as being able to do a better job, myself.
Here’s a breakdown of the pieces, as best as I can figure out:
나 = I
-는 = [TOPIC marker]
어디서 = from where[ever]
왔 = come [with embedded PAST tense marker]
-는가 = [This thing puzzles the heck out of me, but I found the following in on page 255 of my “Korean Grammar for International Learners” (my “bible”):  “Vst-는가 하다  This pattern expresses the speaker’s thoughts, imaginings or suppositions about an action or state of affairs.”  Also, it seems to be something that’s used when there is an alternation of choices.  So from a translation standpoint, I’ve opted for the somewhat old-fashioned-sounding modal construction using “may … “]
어디로 = to where[ever]
갈 = go [FUTURE participle]
것이 = [a periphrastic “blank” nominalizer with a copula (“be-verb”) suffix.  Combined with the preceding future participle, it makes a periphrastic future or suppositional tense]
 -ㄴ가 = [This the second installment of the “alternation” referenced above, in talking about “may…”]
를 = [if you decide to take the whole “sentence so far” as a nominal, this is a handy OBJECT marker making it all the object of the following verb]
생각하 = think [unmarked verb stem]
지 = [pre-NEGative non-terminative flag (maybe analogous to some language’s deployment of a subjunctive)]
않 = [NEG… the whole “think” phrase up-to-this-point is now, suddenly, negative, but I don’t think it really has that meaning… it seems more subjunctive]
고 = and / for [a kind of verbal non-terminative conjunct ending, also used in progressive modes]
살아 = live [unmarked FINITE form]
온 = [this bothers me, but I think it’s a participle of “to come” that’s been strung onto the proceeding verb “live” – that would make it an example of the famous “verb serialization” phenom that we study in linguistics, for which Korean is often used as an example.  I have trouble seeing how the conjoined first “half” (up to 않고) joins to this relativized form that seems to mean “…that [I] have come to live…”]
죄 = misdeed
를 = [OBJECT marker … again, for the second half of the sentence, now]
참회하 = repent [unmarked non-terminative]
며 = while
절하 = bow [unmarked non-terminative]
-ㅂ니다 = [terminative, high-formal, declarative ending … YAY, we made it!]
I saw my breath this morning, walking to the bus terminal.  Fall is happening fast, this year.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 3) 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / The 108 / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

“I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
It begins to become a regular exercise (is it a linguistic pursuit, a cultural pursuit, or a religious one?).

1. 지극한 마음으로 부처님께 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Buddha with all my heart.”
2. 지극한 마음으로 부처님 법에 귀의합니다.
     “I turn to the Buddha Dharma [Law of Buddha] with all my heart.”
3. 지극한 마음으로 승가에 귀의합니다.

I would read the third affirmation as “I turn to the Sangha [Buddhist community-of-faithful] with all my heart.”
The Korean “승가” [seung-ga] is given as “priesthood” by naver’s dictionary, but I don’t think this is accurate.  Sangha (this is the Pali word, I think, but like dharma, it’s widely used in untranslated form in English Language Buddhist literature) is a little bit broader than that.  It’s kind of the Buddhist equivalent of the word “church” in Christian tradition, almost – it can mean those affiliated with a church directly, like priests or pastors or whatever, but it can also mean everybody in the community.
In the past week, since Chuseok day, fall has arrived and spun a cocoon of chill breezes and gold-green rice fields and loosening leaves across the Korean landscape.  Winter will emerge from this chrysalis, in a month or two.  I’m pleased.  I much prefer Autumn to Summer.

Caveat: 須藤元気 (Genki Sudo)

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

pictureOne of my fellow foreigners-in-Hantucky (who I don’t know well at all but whom I follow in facebookland) posted a video, there, by Japanese polymath Genki Sudo. I was impressed, and couldn’t resist putting him here. The guy is the real-life-person who most reminds me of the Buckaroo Banzai character (well, except for the brain surgery and battling-aliens-to-save-Earth parts). He’s a martial artist / wrestler / Buddhist activist and author / musician / dancer / calligrapher / graduate-student-in-public-administration and who knows what else – regardless, like any competent 21st century denizen, he’s an effective self-promoter. I have to agree with Carl-teacher – the best part in the video is when the kids are joining in. Watch it (the embed didn’t work that well, you can link out to youtubeland) –  it’s worth it.

What I’m listening to right now.


須藤元気 [Genki Sudo], “World Order.”

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Caveat: Intrinsic or Extrinsic?

Teaching & Methodology

In education psychology, at least at the introductory level that I've been exposed to, there is a distinction drawn between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is supposed to be motivatation that arises from "desire to learn" type impulses, the inherent rewards of figuring things out, that type of thing.  It's generally characterized as "good" motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is motivation that arises from outside, like offers of rewards (typically, candy, it seems, if you're teaching English in Korea), etc.  It is sometimes characterized as less effective.

I've always been uncomfortable with the distiction – while still nevertheless not entirely comfortable with giving extrinsic rewards to students, either. 

Yesterday I had an amazing afterschool class with my third graders, that brought to the fore my discomfort with these categorizations of motivation and their typical characterizations.

As some of you know, I've been experimenting with building a "classroom economy."  It's based on a town, which is currently attached to a bunch of poster-boards that I assemble for each class, lacking a permanent "home classroom" in which to operate.  I'll add some pictures, sometime (I took a lot of the one we made on a bulletin board, over the summer, but have neglected picture-taking since the fall term started).

The town has land and money and salaries and buying and selling.  Things like that.  It's pretty simplistic, for the third graders, but they really love it.  And yesterday, I did an experiment.  I wanted to do a lesson where we could practice "giving directions":  "go straight"; "turn left"; "stop; etc.

I told the kids that we would practice for a while, and then we would have a race.  But not like a physical race.  They had to give ME directions, while I was "driving" a little paper car around the town.  The kids would get flustered, and say "go left" when they meant "go right," and I would immediately drive the little paper car off a cliff or a bridge and making exaggerated crashing noises.  But it was all about preparing for the "race" – because I had promised a prize purse to the winner.  The winner of this race was going to get a thousand dollars.  That was substantial cash in the scale of the classroom economy.  Every single student was BEGGING to practice, for this race (which will occur next class).

So my philosophical question:  was this extrinsic motivation?  Or intrinsic?  What was going on, psychologically?  They wanted to win the money.  That's considered extrinsic.  But the money is just play money, and it's limited to inside the classroom economy.  And they really seemed to be having fun, too, making my car crash as they gave me directions, and trying to find the location I'd told them to give me directions to.  It seemed really intrinsic. 

I don't know the answer.  I'm posing a question.

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