Written by Beth Salerno, Senior Lecturer ’07-08
Teaching American history in South Korea has all the promise and pitfalls of teaching at a highly diverse institution in the U.S. Widely varying English levels and cultural disparities between professor and students are standard. However, teaching in Korea also involves students who have never experienced a democratic classroom, who have limited background in American history, and who may not necessarily see this topic as relevant to their lives. This raises crucial questions about goals, content and methods. After eight months of teaching in the American Studies Program at Pyeongtaek University, I have only begun to understand the complexities inherent in this endeavor. I share my thoughts in the hope that others can build on what I have learned.
Why teach American history in South Korea at all? The Korean study of American history developed 40 years ago, with established societies for both U.S. History and American Studies, but there are less than 10 American Studies programs in Korea. Most Koreans know a fair bit about the U.S. already, from reading the newspapers, watching television, eating out, listening to their parents and grandparents talk, or increasingly, from study abroad or work in the U.S. But in-depth knowledge of American history is quite lacking.
So what does the formal study of American history give to students? From the Fulbright program perspective, lectures teach American history to help foreigners understand who and what we are. We teach to enable understanding of the American past and our culture, and perhaps thus to create understanding, if not sympathy with, our decisions and policies. This seems particularly relevant in South Korea, a major military and trading partner.
One can accurately say that U.S. history is part of Korean history. In the most direct terms, Korea signed its first-ever foreign treaty with the U.S. and the U.S. was and is heavily involved in the Korean War and its aftermath. The presence of 30,000 U.S. troops and almost that many civilians provides Koreans with daily reminders of the impact of U.S. history. Korean law, politics, popular culture, food trends and language are all being affected by the U.S. Therefore, to teach American history here is to teach the past, the present and the future. It is teaching to people who perceive America as an ally, though not always the most welcome one. It enables one to teach not only a foreign culture, but a comparison between two culture, which are radically different, yet closely interconnected.
Students who study America seem to do so for two reasons. The first is because it gives them additional exposure to English, an increasingly vital asset in a competitive job market. Second, many students think it will help them get access to higher education or work in America. Few students seem to study America in order to criticize it, or even to learn lessons which could be applied in a Korean context. But they also clearly want the “truth” about America, what it is really like and why it behaves the way it does.
Why one teaches in Korea should directly shape the content of the courses. For Fulbrighters, the course topic is chosen in conjunction with the host university and there may not be much flexibility. In 2007-8, my courses were Race and Gender in American Society, American Political Culture (the Constitution and Bill of Rights) and Contemporary American Society (U.S. History from 1945). Since I had never taught any of these courses before, I was faced with a blank slate. After taking into account what the department needed me to cover, I chose to follow two questions in selecting my content: 1) How are the U.S. and Korea similar and different? and 2) What historical events, trends, and issues have made America the way it is today? These choices ensured that the material would be immediately relevant to the students’ goal of understanding America today.
It also allowed some of them to come to class already knowledgeable about the Korean half of the comparison. I found it crucial to stress that I did not expect students to accept everything American as good and everything Korean as bad or vice versa. Both countries have changed over time, and there is much to learn from seeing how different countries reacted to similar events or social changes.
No matter what content one chooses, one has to get it across. I found the choice of method far more important than the choice of content. Typically, Korean students are trained to memorize. The entire 12 year school curriculum is designed to gain students a high score on the national college entrance exam. This means 12 hour school days for middle school students and 15-18 hour days for high school students. This national exam is so important that planes are banned from taking off or landing during the English comprehension portion. Drivers are asked not to beep their horns. All workers are asked to come in one hour late to enable students to get to test sites on time. Yet the exam itself is hour upon hour of fact-based questions, with little room for critical thinking, opinion-forming, or comparison. This has ramifications in the college classroom. Most university professors lecture — sometimes for an entire 2 1/2hour class with two ten minute breaks. Students rarely engage in class discussion since the reading is designed to provide more facts.
With this in mind, I decided to make my courses an experience of American culture as well as courses about it. Since my classes were set as 2 1/2 hours once a week, I knew I could not lecture the entire time, even had I been so inclined. Neither the students nor I would survive the experience! Therefore each class involves at least three sections. In deference to tradition and the need to get across basic material, I do lecture in 30 minute segments. I use Powerpoint so students can read key words and I provide printed copies of the Powerpoint slides so students can limit their note taking to the essentials. Listening to a foreigner speak English is a fairly new and very scary undertaking for my students, so I speak slowly and clearly. In explaining something complex, I repeat the key points multiple times, and will occasionally use both the English and the Korean word (when I know it) so students do not have to type everything into their translation machines.
I also encourage students to ask questions during and after my lecture. It has taken some time for students to be willing to interrupt someone older and of higher status than themselves to ask for clarification. Asking a question also makes a student stand out, a very scary option in a highly communal culture. However, by watching their faces, I can often tell when students are confused. By stopping, clarifying, and checking for understanding before moving on, I give my students a chance to “ask” a question without opening their mouths. This has made many students believe that I care whether they learn the material, and has emboldened more to speak out despite their training not to.
I require students to discuss primary and secondary sources in small groups. The democratic idea that they should talk to any three people sitting near them, rather than a carefully selected and professor-approved group, was a new experience. I offer the students a choice of speaking in English or Korean; for many they really need to discuss in Korean to be sure they have understood all the lectures and readings in English. In addition, using one’s native language often permits a far higher level of debate, which many students are eager to do. Moving from memorizing the “right” answer to debating the “right” answer to recognizing there is more than one right answer has taken time and often left the students pushing for a “final” answer they can write on the test. Yet students who have me for the second time clearly get it. One group of seniors discussed primary sources from the American Civil Rights Movement for over an hour with only minimal guidance from me, moving from African Americans to women to gay rights’ struggles. Without prompting they began to debate the relevance of the U.S. ideas and protest methods to issues in Korea. When Korean students are willing to not only discuss but hotly debate extremely sensitive issues like homosexuality in a respectful and thoughtful way, they have learned skills that will serve them well long after they have forgotten most of the facts from my classes.
Cultural differences require the professor as well as the students to adapt. Calling the roll is a painful experience if one has never encountered a sheet of Korean names before, However, learning enough Hangeul (Korean alphabet) to call out the names accurately, and using Korean names rather than forcing students to choose English names, makes clear that you take Korean culture and your students seriously. I read the Korean English-language newspaper daily and bring examples to class drawn from current events. When a student breaks their training to actually ask a question during my lecture, I acknowledge the difficulty and praise them. I wait patiently for a very bright student with weak English to get her point across, giving her praise for her thought and encouraging her to speak up again.
There are some things that are simply not going to change. Students have hierarchies based on age and they defer to authority, even when the authority is wrong, They like to bring me gifts of soda or tangerines during our breaks. I always gratefully accept them, even when I do not like them, because refusing a gift would be rude and insensitive and would challenge the sense of community the gift creates. I am also sensitive when I bring up topics that might be offensive or deeply foreign to my students, allowing them to work through their own cultural beliefs until they can accept that other viewpoints and cultural standards exist. By being aware of Korean traditions I show that I am meeting students halfway, and that exploring other cultures is a respectful act that requires careful attention. I do not always get it right, and that can be important too. By not getting upset, allowing the students to correct me, and thanking them for their attention, I make clear mistakes are inevitable and acceptable. This gives students more room to explore and risk.
There are a lot of obstacles to successful teaching in Korea, although these are not so different from the obstacles in American universities. Many things take priority over attending class — department retreats, university festivals, basketball and soccer games, ROTC. Korean university students are also generally taking 6-7 classes, seriously limiting the time they can spend on my homework. For students trained to memorize, the thinking and debating I require takes a huge amount of time and energy — particularly when you have to look up more than half the words in a two page English-language reading. Because I am at a provincial university, I have found that asking students to read two pages and write a one page paper every week is the limit of what they can do, making it painfully slow to “get through the content.” My lectures thus have to fill in the time line, the story line, the basic facts and some of the interpretation, a difficult job in 30 minutes. I often find myself leaving out far more than I can fit in. Yet the readings and debates, however limited compared to what we could ideally cover, are what really cement the knowledge in the students’ minds. By debating, trying out alternative ideas, or comparing the new information to what they already know (or can look up) about Korea, students lodge the information more permanently in their minds. Thus it is more accessible when they need it later to shape their opinions or decisions.
When I gave my first midterm review sheet, my students quietly examined it. Yet the minute class was over, the first complaints trickled in and within days I had heard from just about every student. I had asked big, open-ended questions that required students to synthesize lecture, readings and discussion. Even worse, students had to form and defend an opinion, not repeat whatever opinion I shared with them in class. In the end, very weak students did poorly and everyone else did well, proving that most could adapt to the unusual form. And a half-dozen students chose to take another class with me the second semester, not only because they enjoyed the content, but because they saw value in the method. One student told me, “Your class is the hardest class I have ever taken, but it is teaching me for life.” In the end, this is the goal of all our teaching. We do not provide information simply so students can answer exam questions; we teach so that students have skills and knowledge they can apply to the difficult business of life. If our teaching also creates some international understanding and cultural sensitivity, we have done something right.