My younger brother graduated from high school yesterday.
It’s been a while since I’ve last been to OLGM. I’ve only visited the school at most five times since I graduated from its grade school department six years ago. My past teachers, when I bump into them, always express their disappointment at the fact that I rarely visit my grade school alma mater. Which is lamentable for me too, since I studied in OLGM for far longer than I studied in Ateneo or longer than the time it’d hopefully take me to complete my undergraduate studies in UP, and also because I graduated as my batch’s valedictorian. Visiting appears to be the least I can do to show gratitude or something. I don’t know if they were serious but some of my teachers were sort hinting that I should come back after a few years and speak in a future commencement ceremony.
Anyway, one change I noticed in OLGM is that there is a much higher ratio of Korean students now. This is a guess, but from how I observed my brother’s batch, one of every four students in OLGM is Korean. We had one or two Koreans in our batch too, but I’ve never had a Korean classmate in my seven year stay in OLGM, so I find it such a novelty. They’re here to study English, I suppose. Which is sort of sad because they seem to be doing it at the expense of learning Science or Math. I’ve always believed that Science and Math should be taught in a student’s native tongue. How can someone learn Math or Science well if it’s being taught in a foreign language that person is not very fluent at? I don’t know if it’s a trend, but most of my Korean batchmates were struggling with their studies. But if it is a trend, I’m sure it’s not because Koreans are generally poor-learners, it’s because the lessons and subjects aren’t taught in their language.
Anyway, I digressed too much. If ever my grade school alma mater do get me to speak in a graduation ceremony in the future, I’d tell the students that if there’s one thing they could emulate from their Korean colleagues, is that the Koreans will always go back to Korea after studying abroad. We definitely need a similar or stronger sense of nationalism and responsible citizenship to make it work here.
law student, national democracy activist, film school graduate, photography hobbyist
Keure…
I’ve talked to some of these Korean professors (whom I worked with). South Koreans are really struggling for ‘specialized’ English learning programs because most of the employers (who are employing applicants good jobs) back there in their coutnry augmented “with English proficiency” as a job application pre-requisite. Poor thing is, those Koreans who have not taken English subjects (or haven’t taken English subjects seriously) during their elementary days need to take compact, comprehensive, and expensive English proficiency programs to supply their language ‘deficiencies’.
Mahirap daw makakuha ng trabaho ang di marunong mag-English.
It’s not that their language are taught in a medium which they hardly understand. Perhaps it’d be applicable for Koreans studying here in the Philippines (like me ^_^). Koreans boast their education as one of the best in the world and all their instructional materials are published in hangugeo. Mapa-mathematics at maging technical and scientific terms ay translated or transliterated into hanggungmal. Ewan ko na lang ngayon, but I think changing their medium of instruction is part of the government’s supression for English language education. They, too, are blabbing about their government insisting Koreans to, not only to enroll in military schools, learn English. They also talk about ‘nationalistic’ matters na napansin kong kinaiinggitan ng mga Filipinos. Masyado na ring Americanized ang SK.
Onga. Wawa naman mga Korean classmates natin! Siguro dapat may special class for Koreans only tapos Korean ang professor, para maintindihan naman nila, diba?
Nagpapasalamat ako sa kanila, dagdag din sa allowance ang Php 100 per hour sa pagtutor sa kanila noh!?
100 per hour lang? That’s too low for a tutor.
One-on-one ang tutorials kaya dapat mahal talaga, aroud 300 per hour
oh i c….. 100 per hour…2006 na ngyon..
famous words of first OLGM korean graduate, “paoro rock the da door!”