I'm certainly not the first person to say life is a game. It is in many ways, not simply in the manner in which life is playful and beautiful, but in how we interact with each other. We are all playing games with one another, many of them with particular rules. Some rules are implicit, others explicit, and our ability to play by and bend the rules of these games is what makes up our social lives. The games we play are games of etiquette, communication, affection, and attention. Their rules tell us who we say "hello" to and how we respond to the question "how are you?" They reinforce our relationships, be they friendships, love affairs, or family, guiding us in how to act and react.
I've come to see teaching as a misunderstood game, or perhaps, misperceived.
Mainly, because what mass education does isn't necessarily what we think it does. Many of us come to school thinking of it as a place to acquire academic knowledge, but it isn't. Schools (at least until university) are not simply places of academic development, they are centers of social reinforcement.
Schools teach people how to interact with their society. They set standards (at a very young age) about what it is to be a good citizen.
When I started as a teacher, I considered my position as an academic one. I was to nurture and impart knowledge upon learners, academic and practical communication skills. However, now I'm coming to realize that academia is another social game. It has it's unique rules, skills, and structure. We are trained in high school how to play the academic game, how to study, read, and write research papers. How to receive research tasks and carry them out independently of moment to moment guidance. If we can demonstrate proficiency at this game, we graduate and are given the option to continue playing academia in higher education. It is a game I admittedly enjoy, but a game nonetheless and it's rules and skills do not always apply outside it's walls.
These days I spend a great deal of time teaching young students. Kids who are still learning the ropes when it comes to the game of society. I find that my greatest trials as a teacher are not teaching, but enforcing the necessary behavior to teach in a classroom environment. This is a unique challenge as a foreign teacher because the standards of behavior in class are quite different when it comes to Korea and the US. Furthermore, my students' perceptions of me as a foreign teacher also contribute an enormous amount to their own conceptions regarding appropriate behavior. Because I'm a foreigner the norms I expect in a classroom are not the same for Koreans.
For example: in the US, it is expected that when the bell rings, class begins. You are expected to be in your seats and ready to start a lesson. In Korea, students tend to be rushing to class after the bell rings. It's not uncommon for students to arrive in class anywhere from five minutes before the bell to five minutes after the bell! Yet, this is acceptable, and normal in the classes I've attended and taught in this country. Is this one of the reasons many Koreans are notorious for being fashionably late? I'm not sure, but it is curious to ponder.
I have never received any formal training as a teacher. What I have learned I've learned on the job and from online courses in teaching. Though classroom management is an important topic, I have yet to really learn of a teaching course that considers the cultural implications of teaching kids to behave in a classroom. Being in education my imagination is inherently drawn to consider educational structure, method, and reform. I wonder if we are fooling ourselves about the aims of state sanctioned education. Academic skills are what we want to impart on our students, it's these subjects that teachers get passionate about and invest themselves in teaching. However, what schools do (or implicitly aim to do) is not make passionate learners, but functional citizens.
I'm still in a personal debate about this. I wonder if it would be better if we reevaluated our education system to explicitly teach students and parents about it's goals to make children into citizens, or if it should simply focus on academic skills. Because if we ignore the moralizing aspect of our education system we are in tacit compliance to the values it passes to children with no dialog about what those values are and how they are transmitted into young minds. Similarly, it cripples teachers with an enormous social responsibility that they are not necessarily trained to consider or carry out. Furthermore it creates a biased standard for which the success of schools is based. Schools are evaluated upon the testable academic ability of its students, not upon their ability to be good citizens. Yet, what are the measurable traits of a functional citizen? Political participation? Stable economic standing with a strong work ethic? Clean criminal record? Are good students the kids who have strong academic skills, or simply the one's who have learned to play the game? Both?
It's worth pondering.
Being an outsider in an education system it's easier to see the socializing characteristics of public education. I try and think back to my own experience as a student and wonder how I thought of my experience. It's hard to dial back my thinking to remember what I was like to experience school as a child. I wonder what kinds of behaviors my education instilled in me without really noticing it. I have to wonder as a teacher now what kinds of behaviors my teaching is implying to my students and how that may contribute to their academic success later in life. I can't help but feel uncomfortable about the idea of being partially responsible for the moral and social development of children. I'm much more keen on being a source of knowledge and guidance academically. Yet, I suppose what makes teaching such a grand adventure is discovering these unexpected aspects of its execution. I never cease to be amazed at how much I don't know about what I do for a living. It's perplexing. So much to learn, so much to do.
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