A Voice from Korea: Why I Support the Libraries

This is an article I wrote for 'Campaign for the Book' in the UK to help them in their campaign against the proposed library closures. 

When speaking a few months ago, author and campaign organiser, Alan Gibbons, used South Korea as an example of a country where libraries are widely used despite being so technologically advanced (one of the government's arguments in the UK is that people don't need libraries as much due to the advances in technology). 

I was asked to write this article as a voice from Korea in order to give an insight into reading and literacy here. 

This is the article: 

Why I Support the Libraries. 

 

For the past five years I have taught as a middle school teacher in Seoul, South Korea, before which I worked as support staff in British secondary school in my hometown, Bolton.  The two schools, despite being similar in terms of size, students’ age and socio-economical backgrounds are vastly different.  Of the four hundred plus students I see through my classroom doors each week, all of them are literate. Even my students in the lowest ability groups are able to read some words and phrases in their second language, English.  This was a very different picture in the British school, where a number of students left each year aged 16 (after 12 years in education) unable to read or write in their first language. 

 

Such an obvious dichotomy, begs the question, ‘Why?’  How is it possible in one of the richest countries in the world for students go through 12 years of education without being able to read when it is, as is shown in Korea, entirely possible for it to be avoided?  It would be hard to find someone who would argue that reading isn’t valuable (David Cameron himself claimed that it is literacy which “pulls people out of poverty”), but it is the kind of reading that is valued which should be brought into question. Reading extensively for the purpose of pleasure or personal interest is far more valuable than classroom texts or academic articles, which are forced on the reader.  And yet there is little time for this extensive reading to be adopted in the heavily academic curriculum.

When I was a child it was during my visits to the local library that the fantastic world of books and the joy of reading became so precious.  As a primary school student, along with my class, I visited our local library once every fortnight where each student was allowed quiet reading time and a chance to browse the books.  We were, at times, also visited by writers and poets who spoke to us with such passion and enthusiasm that it was impossible not to be captivated.   As I remember it, we took full advantage of our time in the library with almost all of us taking the maximum number of books.  I was often back there before the two weeks were over swapping the books again; something which, as the library sat right around the corner from my home was entirely possible for me to do as a child. 

My own secondary school had a beautiful library on site but it there was no time allotted in our timetable to visit it as just a reading class, and the school where I worked had no library on site at all.  My South Korean middle school allocates one period a week where students visit the library and are encouraged to spend the time reading any book of their choice.  As one forty-five minute period is not enough time for reading, the vast majority of students continue reading in their own time.  It seems simple to me that if schools can schedule a time, as they used to, for children to visit libraries in their school day then they will not only become interested in reading, but also familiar with their local libraries and visit them in their leisure time. 

 

Why though do people need to be in a library when, as is often argued, they can find the same books online?  Well, like is the case in South Korea (which is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world), they are a quiet place for people to study, a safe space for friends to meet or simply a home for people to relax away from the pressures of everyday life.  Libraries in South Korea are well-maintained and welcoming, and on any given day (at any given time), one can enter a Korean library to find it packed full of people of all ages.  As teenagers chatter and swap books, strangers sit beside one another, scattered around the tables and floors lost in their own journeys. The libraries are not full because of the heavy work load laid on students, who are in classrooms up to 14 hours a day, but despite it.  It is not a rare sight to see middle school students sitting at lunch time reading quietly to themselves or to see students discussing and swapping books.   

There is a real sense of community that is felt in a library which one struggles to find symmetry with in any other place.  And this feeling is universal.  You can visit any number of libraries in the UK and find different strangers engaged in the same activities.  Libraries provide communities with a tangible centre which cannot be found in the isolation of cyber space.

What public libraries offer is a space for people to escape from their classrooms, workplaces or even real life.  Reading away from the restraints of a classroom or the pressures inside the home allows for escapism, encourages creative thought, and the freedom to build and develop one’s own interests; none of which can be developed inside a classroom, where what is read is dictated.   If a person only reads for the purpose of education they are restricted in what they can take from the process.  When reading becomes an exercise for answering tedious comprehension questions where students simply ‘pick out’ information to complete worksheets and prepare for exams, the very act of reading is diminished.  Reading for pleasure alters how a person interacts with what is being read. It not only teaches and inspires, it allows autonomy of the individual to decide what is relevant, what is interesting and, what is important to them and their world.  What other space in a child’s life (or indeed an adult’s) can this be found? 

 

The times I spent in libraries as a child (and adult) are some of my most cherished memories.  The characters in the books I read were as real to me as any classmate, teacher or friend.  The hours spent on adventures and journeys allowed me to be thoughtful and creative and build a world outside of my reality.  The place a person creates inside themselves runs as far as the imagination allows and can certainly not be mirrored inside a classroom, whilst watching T.V. or online.  This is what the libraries give to people, and to take this away is to remove the very point at which a community is built. 

“I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries."
— Carl Sagan (Cosmos)

Final Reflections

If you wake up in a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

Despite me being possibly the most vocal critic of the required blogging, I have to say I actually have really enjoyed it.  So I thought I would offer one final reflection now that the course has ended.  I can’t really believe what a long time ago the first class now feels.  Not so much in terms of time, but in terms of change. 

 I can't say I've ever taken so much from a class, either academically or emotionally.  I am not really sure why that is; perhaps it is just where I am in my life now rather than when I was an undergraduate, or perhaps it is where I am geographically.  Being forced to face people whose empowerment may come largely from removing what I am and what I represent from their lives was (is) pretty tough to take. But I suppose on a long enough time line everyone’s survival rate drops to zero. 

 As we pushed through the theoretical part of the course at the beginning, I certainly struggled with some of the ideas.  I felt silenced as a 'native speaker' and vocalised as a woman.  Yet, I still felt like we moved forward together and that there was a sense of support for what everyone was trying to do in their own classrooms and their own lives, as every Saturday night we were finding something out: we were finding out more and more that we were not alone. 

And it was precisely because of how I felt as a student that I struggled as a teacher.  My classroom has always been a space where critical thinking has been encouraged and valued.  Yet, as I began to feel isolated in our class, I questioned if activities that took place in my own classroom may work to isolate my students in the same way.  I was even, on a few occasions, at the point of rejecting critical pedagogies all together.  I couldn’t see how I could ask my students to think things if they hadn’t felt them, or ask them to challenge things that they could not change. And I didn’t know how much of what took place in the classroom really translated into the real world. .

Losing all hope was freedom

But then I realised that it wasn’t about raising students’ awareness about all that I see wrong with the world, or worse still what I see is wrong in their worlds.  But it is about showing them that they themselves have the power to change things. It wasn’t about me asking them to feel things that are not part of their world.  It’s about engaging them in process of empowerment, where they do have a voice and they do have a value, which can begin them on a journey where they can create change by themselves.    

So that’s where I am right now. And that’s what I hope to continue to bring to my students, as I can see that each and every one of them is capable of changing their world little by little if that’s what they choose for themselves, so I am going to stop trying to control everything and just let it go!

And finally, did I take a lot from this class?  Absolutely!  Just as Curtis told me I would. 

I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.

*Thanks Martin for connecting Freire’s ideas to Tyler Durden’s!  It only made me love Freire more.*

Smart vs Educated. Lived vs Learnt

The longer I spend in education, as both a student and a teacher, the more I question its value.  For me, Nate Shaw, was so “remarkable” because he wasn’t educated, not despite of it.  Arguably, being subjected to the school system would have taught him that he was a black, working class man, who should know his position in the world. Yet through working the land, he learnt how valuable he was as he excelled at something that he loved. And despite all the adversity he faced in his life, knowing that he was worth something somewhere, arguably, was why he refused to allow his spirit to be broken.

As I watch my students, there are so many (too many) who are ‘failing’ in school. Failing or, should I say being failed, only because they don’t excel in the academic subjects that are so valued and because they refuse to be trained into obedience.  Their interests are ignored, their smarts not explored and, sadly, they are taught everyday that they are failures.  Yet, these students have so much to offer. They are often the most personable, the most thoughtful and the most interesting. Their lives outside school are fascinating (and often painful), yet none of these things are valued or even considered.  And how can we expect them to value themselves as wonderful and important individuals when, from such an early age, they are positioned as not good enough?  As Einstein said, “everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will go through its entire life believing it’s a failure”. 

And what is waiting for those of us who ‘succeed’ in the school system?  We sit in graduate schools, regurgitating other people’s thoughts (usually white, educated men's thoughts).  Like I said in class, we were only reading about Nate Shaw in the first place because a white, educated man decided he was worthy to be read.  Arts aren’t valued, emotions and feelings avoided and real lived experiences are only valid if they can be supported by some educated person's thoughts (just like I, ironically tried to validate my own reflections with an Einstein quote above).  But George Orwell’s ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ wasn’t such a powerful book because of what he was taught at Eton. It was so powerful because of what he learnt in the world.  Because he lived it, because he felt it was what made reading it so compelling. And still, despite how real this book was, I didn’t learn anything about poverty from reading it. What I learnt about poverty came from what I have seen and what I have felt in the world.  No one could teach me that in a school.

“If I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo?  You know a lot about him I bet.  Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations.  But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.  You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.”  Good Will Hunting. 

Comment for Christy

I've been trying to comment for about 24 hours and it keeps saying its done and it isn't.  Anyway it is driving me insane and ive given up, so this is the next best thing.  So, as promised, here is my comment... 

Wow, Christy, I am really sorry to read that you felt like that on Saturday.  I can't speak for anyone else in the class, but my interpretation of what people were saying was not an attack at you personally. In fact, I felt that there was a real respect for how you were so adamant to include critical lessons within the restraints that you have (your situation seems to be the most difficult in terms of having space to do what we are talking about every week). 

I think there is a sense that idealistically all these ideas that we trawl through every week are great in situations such as those who work in the university setting, but for people like me and you, it’s not so easy.  We live in a system where standardized testing is not only a reality, it’s the most important part of the students’ education (in terms of progressing and/or succeeding beyond schools).  And that is true in the UK as much as it is here. 

What struck me the most when I read your blog, is that you felt uncomfortable about how you were positioned in the class on Saturday.  It is far easier for some people in the class to advocate that critical pedagogies are easy to implement in their classrooms, without fully understanding the different realities that we are all faced with every day.  I also feel that when I talk about the obstacles that I am faced with I come off sounding defeatist and negative, and like I am not fully invested in moving toward achieving our goal.  Like you and I have discussed, it isn’t easy to be vocal in class at times as we leave ourselves open to attack and we can often lose face when others’ misinterpret what we are saying.  However, it is still incredibly brave to do so, especially in a situation where there are lots of louder voices ready to react and where silence has its own rewards.

Idiot(s) at the Bar

For the last few weeks, I have struggled with the readings.  Not because they are too difficult for me academically, but because they have heightened negative feelings I have.  The comic strip that was discussed in the Norton and Moffet article infuriated me, and the Williamson article was (actually) painful for me to read, yet when I discussed this with a (male) classmate to see if he’d had the same feelings he told me that he hadn’t.  Why? Because he isn’t a woman and therefore can only see the struggles of women as “analytical”.  Yet, it is not simply because I'm a woman these articles have resonated so deeply with me, but because of my experiences as a woman. 

However, what I struggle with is the disconnect between how I think I feel and how I actually feel.  I don’t think that I am oppressed, marginalized, or treated as a second class citizen, most of the time I feel strong, empowered and, dare I say it, equal.  Yet, if that were true then how could the readings that I mentioned above be so powerful for me?   What are these experiences?  I tried to think of some and I couldn’t come up with any examples.  With a heightened sense about where these feelings had come from, I went out on Saturday night with my friend.  I soon realised how I feel the way I do. 

My friend (who happened to be male) and I went to a bar in Seoul.  We sat down at the bar, it was late and we had had a few drinks at this point.  Facing us at the bar was this sticker: 

("put a little sex in your violence")

Of course, this sparked a reaction from me, so I started to talk to my friend about it.  We had both had different reactions to it, and I started explaining why it was so offensive to me.   

Whilst I was talking, I accidentally bumped the man sitting beside me at the bar, so I naturally turned and apologised, to which he scorned me for my “moaning” about the sticker, and I simply retorted that bumping him was an accident, I had already apologised and there was nothing more I could do. To which he replied:

“I hate Irish women”.  

I shrugged and laughed.  “I’m not Irish”. 

“I hate Scottish women then”. 

Again, I gave him the same reaction.  At which point his embarrassment at making himself look both stupid and ignorant whilst trying to make me look stupid and ignorant, he replied, “whatever.  Just another stupid woman with too much to say”. 

Wow!  I was (ironically) dumbfounded. I had nothing to say, let alone too much.  Yet, more ironically, I wasn’t even slightly surprised.  In that moment, I had a choice of how to deal with it, with him, with his words.  What good would it do me to enter into an argument with this guy who already thinks that women have too much to say?  However, what good would it do to remain silent and allow him to take away my voice because I was afraid that he would come at me with more remarks that questioned my femininity or 'womanness' as he sees them?  Whilst the whole time questioning why I even care what he thinks.  I wasn’t afraid of this man, yet I knew that his words could hurt me. 

My choice was to remain silent.  In which I both gained and conceded power.  He wanted to enter into an argument with me, and I wouldn’t allow it.  Yet, it didn’t feel like a victory.  And if it doesn’t feel like a victory, then is it even a victory at all? 

This was the point I tried (miserably) to make to Matthew in class on Saturday.  His perception of a person’s silence may not be their own perception of it.  The idiot at the bar, surely thought he had in some way beat me.  I’m sure he thought that his comment had made me realise that I did in fact have too much to say and that I’d better be quiet.  That wasn’t my reason for being silent.  I had nothing to say to him.  I didn’t want to enter into any kind of dialogue with him.  He was nothing to me.  Yet, I somehow managed to both challenge his words and uphold them at the same time.  If I think that I am challenging him, yet he thinks that he has won, then were my actions subversive at all?  Like with the discussion in class, if those who speak read others’ silence as a ‘lack of knowledge, understanding or intelligence’ then regardless of the actual reasons behind the silence, does it then come to mean what whoever names it chooses it to mean?  Of course, we judge others on our own standards.  Perhaps for those who speak often only choose to remain quiet when they lack knowledge and therefore conclude that others do too.  And, as Matthew, suggested, if he names the silence then can he influence others’ opinions about those people who refuse to defend themselves, verbally, against his comments?  My answer to that would be yes and no.  Obviously words can be influential and powerful, but I think that it is a massive underestimation of people and their ability to resist, question and reject what they hear (especially if what they hear seems an attack at what they are). 

However, what I struggled with after my experience with the idiot at the bar, was that despite me choosing my silence, if he interpreted a different way then it didn’t really empower me at all, did it?  To demand that someone enter into a dialogue with you because that is the only way you see that they can have power is, of course in many ways, oppressive, and was what was being suggested in class on Saturday.  Yet, is it at times necessary to enter into power struggles with a person in the only way that they see power in order to gain a small piece of it for yourself?  Or is this in itself conceding power?

Paradoxically, later on the same night, when my friend had gone to the bathroom, another guy came over and sat in his seat.  I, politely, told him that someone was sitting there and could he please move.  He wouldn’t.  “I just want to talk to you”, he told me.  To which I again politely told him that I didn’t want to talk to him.  At this point another guy in the bar, (not my friend) came over and told him to leave.  Oh my Knight in Shining Armor!  The first guy immediately apologised to him (not me) and left.  Why were this guy’s words so much more powerful than mine? Why did he deserve an apology and not me? Unlike with the idiot at the bar, where I had chosen my silence, this time I had chosen to speak and been ignored.  I clearly had no say over how this was going to go.  I didn’t want to be rescued anymore than I wanted to be spoken to, yet none of that mattered to the two men who had engaged in an exchange over me.  I was simply an object.  I didn’t want my silence anymore, but now I  had no voice. 

Lesson Plan

Basic Information
My lesson plan is designed for high-level, middle school students in the 3rd Grade (16 years old).  I made this lesson plan as part of both my work for this class and Douglas' reading class. 


This lesson was taught in 3 x 45 minute periods.  This class was an extra class therefore the students were high level only and the groups had no more than ten students in each.


Lesson Goals 
My goal was to encourage an oppositional reading from students through removing elements that may lead them to come to a particular or desired conclusion.  As the received reading is not clear, students had to work to create their own answers.  I also wanted to encourage them to reflect on how they imagined the story as they did and understand how they may interpret things differently based on their own experiences and identities. 


I did not focus on any language function or structure.  However, I was trying to encourage my students to use top-down reading strategies with the final passage, therefore I limited the use of dictionaries and gave them a time limit for completing the reading.   


Lesson Plan and Activities
The students were initially given a short extract from a story (handout 1). In the extract, all names and personal pronouns were removed so that students weren’t given any information about the characters.

They were required to read the extract in pairs and then write a description of the four characters (W, X, Y and Z) including age, gender, race and job (handout 3), as well as answering four questions (handout 2).   They were reminded that this was not a creative writing exercise and to answer the questions based on the initial thoughts they had when reading the extract.  As they were working in pairs the studens had to justify their answers to each other and come up with the one that they thought the most likely and give reasons as to why. 

Students then presented their ideas to the rest of the group, giving reasons for their choices and compared similarities and differences. 

Once they had given their ideas about the story, students read the real story from which the extract was taken (handout 4-6). Then students answered the four questions again using the real story and compared these to their own answers. 

Students then compared their answers to the real story and took part in a discussion as to why their answers were so similar/different (all the students’ answers were different to the story when I did this in my classes).

Once they knew the characters they completed the character chart again (race, gender, age, job) and then were given the real pictures (handout 7). Again they discussed the reasons for their answers and surprise (or, in some cases, lack of) at the real character pictures. 

Reflections

There were times when the students struggled to express what they meant due to a limited language ability, which (as they told me) was both frustrating and difficult for them. However, their ideas were interesting and perceptive and their reflections at every stage were both insightful and thoughtful.

. 

Fairytale Land Revisited

I found a copy of the comic that we talked about in class last week. 

Its on P.162-167 of the article.  If you follow this link:  https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/9205 then click on the link under "files" there is a copy of the comic in the apendix of the article. 

Now I've seen the comic, I like it even less.  I know from talking to/being around my female students who are 14-16 years old, there is very often only one thing that they think about...getting themselves boyfriends.  Betty may be strong, smart and independent, but she's still left alone at the end because she doesn't follow the norm of what a woman should be and she refuses to turn herself into a sex object to get Archie.  That is not to say that I don't think it is both admirable and completely likely that Betty isn't even concerned with Archie's affections, I just think that if young girls who are interested in the attention of men (which many of them are) the message could be a dangerous one.  Of course, that is my reading of this and my students may have a different view but, honestly, I doubt it.  

I find it sad and frustrating that a comic that is designed to challenge how women are represented seems to so blatantly miss the point and manage to possibly be as damaging as the stereotypes it claims to fight against.  For example, Helen Melon, who apparently shows us (us being women) that the way to fight against bullies like Georgie Porgie is to be just like him sends an equally dangerous message.  Helen Melon isn’t crying like the other girls because she’s too busy being aggressive and sexually harassing the boys herself, which surely can only send a negative message to young girls about how to deal with unwanted sexual attention from men.  I also very much doubt that Helen’s behaviour got her anywhere.  In fact, in reality, it probably stigmatized her as a ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ or ‘ladette’ or any of those other awful words that people use to talk about women. (Maybe that's why Helen Melon ran away)

If this comic was really meant to send a message to women and young girls about how to empower themselves then quite frankly it not only missed a massive opportunity, but the writers have a disappointing view about how women should achieve real equality.  If all it hoped to do was teach women to get away from the idea that they should be needy and “namby-pamby” in order to get what they want, then it, maybe was in some small way effective.  However, what it did was replace those ideas with the idea that women need to be either overtly sexy or just like men to get what they want, which is just as, if not more, damaging.  Quite honestly, I just don’t get it. 

I would be interested to see how my students (both male and female) reacted to the comic but, unfortunately, I’m not sure if they would have enough background information about the original stories for them to make a fair assessment.  I like the idea of tackling the stories we read as young children in the classroom, but I would need to find some original Korean fairytales in order to make it relevant.