Thursday, November 27, 2008

Inappropriate!

I just got out of one of my sixth grade classes. Kim Sun, my co-teacher, likes to show the students 2 second muted clips from Korean comedy television shows, for the students to say what the actors are doing using the language structure of the lesson.

***digression***

There are big screen TV's connected to a computer with high speed internet (very high speed) in every classroom in Korea. If the U.S. wants keep up we need a massive increase in our education funding.

***end digression***

The language structures for our current lesson are "Don't..." and "It's time to..."

For "Don't..." we watched an eight year old girl run full speed into a flying jump kick into the chest of one of her classmates, knocking him flat to the ground. "Don't kick your friends." Indeed.

For "It's time to..." we had (I couldn't make this up), a group of 20-somethings standing around a guy lying on his side, with his back to us, on what looked like an operating table. One of the friends put his hands together as if making a gun with his thumb and forefinger, and proceeded to poke his friend right in the cornhole. This looped over and over so as to create the motion of... no... I'm not going to write that here. But that's what our sixth graders got in class today. "It's time to wake up."

Interestingly, that didn't phase them a bit. What did phase them was last week, when the language structure was "Would you like to..." Kim Sun brought in a clip from a Korean soap of a man giving very tame kiss to a woman lying on a hospital bed. "Would you like to kiss me?" That sent the kids into hushed whispers that lasted until the clip was replaced with the next, maybe 30 seconds later. The tension was so palpable it made me uncomfortable. So, poking your friend in the butt - cool. Kissing a girl - seriously messed up.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's pretty - uh - weird.
But then, that's Korea ;)

Cheers & have a good weekend, Nicole
http://nicoleb.org/b2/