Session 2 readings, 9/9 afternoon

[Tanish Fortson]

I agree, it is fascinating to learn about the history of a country, especially a country that you plan on visiting one day. I am also very happy that life has changed a bit and everything is not so fixed anymore. A person’s background once was the predictor of their life. To me, in some ways it still is but now a days it fairly easier to get out of things like generational fixes in the United States. The social hierarchy and family background in Korea did play a major role in determining ones future but I have heard things like even now a days North Korea still uses practices that are frowned upon. The grandparents, parents, and even distant relatives do influence a person’s chance at life.

 

I’ve read articles in which money has an even more influential aspect. If you are living in poverty I’ve heard that you are more likely to stay in poverty. The government is failing because officials of organizations use their status to make life better for themselves. But when you really think about is that really that much different from how things are done in the United States? 

[Tanish Fortson]

I read Korea’s Top Ten Things as well. I never thought about incorporating those ideas into my classroom. I too have young students so a lot of your ideas fit nicely with my class as well. Having students trace outlines of North and South Korea is a great idea. You can even take it to the next step and display a map and have students draw it as they see. I also like the invention idea. Students can use resources from around the classroom to make their own inventions. This could be turned into a unit and span out over a few weeks. I also like the idea about a campus clean up day. We tend to get a lot of trash around our school so having the students pick up trash so we can keep our neighborhoods clean like the Koreans is awesome.  And lastly I like the technology aspect. Korea is one of the most highly technological countries so teaching a lesson on how to safely navigate the Internet is useful. 

[Sonia Arrayales]

The "top ten things" was my favorite read. I learned a lot from this breif article and it gave a lot of insightful information. I believe I learned a lot about old and modern Korea from this article. I did not know that Koreans were so in tune with nature and technology driven. 

[Cindy Nguyen]

Maybe I just did not pay attention when my Korean friends would make comments about Japanese people or their attitude towards them. I think I was blind to the animosity between Japanese and Koreans until I met my friend who is half Japanese and Korean.  He had to explain to me that his parents' relationship was so taboo that many saw it was almost a cardinal sin.  After reading "When My Name Was KeoKo" I can see why my friend is torn between cultures and why his parents were ostracized by some family members.

[Alejandra Jimenez]

It's amazing how many cultures have practice the cast systems in their societies to let the privilaged have economic and political sucess based on arranged marriages in order to mantain the social status in order to keep a life style. I think the Western ideas appeal so much to Asian culture because we practice that we can achieve anything we want if we only work hard and keep on trying in order to sucess. The word sucess in Amarica and other Western countiries is an equal opportunity to access economic, social, and political sucess regardless to a person's background. I think that is important to encourage all students to continue exploring the idea of having free choices about what sucess based on strenghts that are academicbased onvarious learning modalities.

I think is important to compare and contrast the idea of a cast system in order for students to understand the historical back ground to build strong relationships between families based of economic and political backgrowd and creating strong community based on social classes.

[Lin ZhaoDavison]

People were stripped of their names to fit into the potical environment and the world.  They could not keep the names of their choices.  The loss of family identity as a result of lost name is indeed an adversity.  Students can do reseah on the original names being lost in Korea and learn about Korean human history.

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