Another problem is a lack of alternate options for those who aren’t getting anything out of reading, writing, and arithmetic later in their middle or high school years before they drop out. There should be trades programs to provide some type of future for these marginal students. Maybe then, they wouldn’t succumb to so many of society’s ills that many in their shoes do (drugs, crime, welfare, or low paying jobs for the rest of their lives).

These problems even make it into colleges later on as many kids are pushed by their parents or society to go to college when they don’t want to go or into certain types of programs that they really have no interest in. It took me two years and lackluster grades to tell my father I was either changing my major or dropping out. Not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer, doctor, businessman, or professor.

I tried instituting some changes at my old school district in the states, but the federal money that mostly runs this system has too great a hold on the administration for them to make any waves. Therefore, everyone, which includes the school-aged future of the world, suffers with this broken, and clueless, system.

As for the hagwon system, I liken it to an after school baby-sitting position that uses short periods of English instruction to pass the time while keeping these kids out of their mother’s hair or from being latch-key kids.

In my first class off the plane, I had a class of crying six year-olds who I couldn’t understand to figure out the problem, and I’m scratching my head thinking I chose to come half-way around the world for a year of this. I later found out that they cried in every class they attended, and were actually worse for their Korean teachers who later came to me to ask how I got them to stop in my class. My secret was ignoring them unless blood was drawn. While I couldn’t actually teach them much at first. I had them get so busy, that they forgot about calling each other names and pulling hair.

Now I teach adults, and I haven’t had to deal with a single pee fight, sneeze in my face, book thrown out a window, thrown chair, or “crying too hard to tell me why,” or psycho mother, in more than a year.

Wanna work at my school? We have an opening coming up.