Movie Time

I'm not teaching this week, rather I have been occupying myself with "patiently" waiting for the summer vacation! Usually, I would have already been on vacation this time of year - in fact, I would have been getting ready to start school again. But Korea goes by a different calendar.

Anyway, this morning they showed the movie Transformers to a group of 3rd graders since their teacher was out sick. I love this movie and could not have been more excited about watching it again. However, I could not stop but think about yet again the many differences between the education system in America and the one here in Korea. To show a movie like that back home, the students' parents would have had to sign a release form in order to permit their child to watch it. Have the parents signed a release form at the beginning of the year? Not to my knowledge, but it does not seem like it would be something done here.

This reminds me of the many humanitarian lessons I'm re-learning while living in Korea. Don't get me wrong--I love my country and cannot wait to go back home, but in America people seem to be generally living a sort of unintentional cautious life, taking care not to be too human with one another. Seeing a stranger verbally reprimand a child without fear of being sued or accused of an outrageous crime and seeing the vice principal of our school offer a couple of 2nd graders a ride home with no anxiety attached to his honest kind act are just two of many common scenarios here in Korea, sadly sporadic ones at home.

At any rate, just a thought!

This is a picture of the 3rd graders fully engrossed in one of the many action scenes from the movie Transformers!