[EDLING:1373] Balanced Picture of English Teaching Needed

[Francis M. Hult]

The Korea Times

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200603/kt2006032318100654070.htm

Balanced Picture of English Teaching Needed

I usually find many interesting news items in your paper on page 3, which 
provides local news. Today, however, you printed a very long article that was 
not a news item and was disturbing and unclear. It was entitled ``Native 
English Teachers Receive Higher Salaries.¡¯¡¯
The headline ``Higher Salaries¡¯¡¯ did not define higher in comparison with 
whom or when? It also seemed to refer only to cram schools or ``hagwons,¡¯¡¯ 
but did not talk about elementary, middle, high school or colleges and 
universities, where many native speakers of English are currently teaching. As 
a result, the impression it gave was distorted.

If the figures given are correct, Korean colleges and universities should take 
notice. Some of the highest-rated ones do not pay the ``4 million won a 
month¡¯¡¯ of hagwon instructors, and some do not even provide the round-trip 
airfare or housing that the article implies is being received by English 
teachers. At the same time, those universities require advanced graduate 
degrees of their native-speaker teachers. What is wrong here? 

I urge you to do more careful information-gathering and to provide a more 
balanced picture of the situation of English teaching in Korea today. Hagwons 
are not the only places where English instruction is given, nor, likely, the 
best. If parents pay large sums of money to send their children there in order 
that they be admitted to prestigious colleges and universities, shouldn't 
those colleges and universities also support their native-speaking English 
programs in more professional ways?

Finally, the drawing accompanying your article is impolite to native-speaking 
foreigners and unhelpful to Koreans as it presents a stereotype that is 
neither accurate nor helpful in the age of Korea's much-touted globalization. 

Sonia Reid Strawn
Seoul 

03-23-2006 18:09