That’s the title to this Hankyoreh article, which was published back in December, and spent too long buried in my bookmarks.

There has been controversy in our country over the picture drawn of an organization of native speakers teaching English. They are subject to criticism mainly for degrading Korea, doing drugs, forging diplomas, and chasing money. This reflects the negative attitude we have towards native speakers who come to Korea to teach English.

What do they think of Korea, Koreans, and Korean schools? We met wih 15 native speaker of English teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools in Korea.

Asked the weak point of Korean education, all of them replied, “students have no way to develop their own abilities.” A high school teacher from Canada said, “because they are not taught to think critically the students seem to wind up not knowing what their own strong and weak points are… Korean education focusses on preparing students for exams, so I think it has much effect on improving teenagers’ behavior.”

On the subject of Korean students’ English schoolwork, one teacher said, “the way I see it, Korean students have no self-confidence to think that they can be better at English… When you study English, of course you are going to make mistakes, but Korean students are afraid of mistakes and take a passive approach to speaking English. It hurts them.”

Asked whether their lessons help Korean students to develop their English abilities just five teachers said yes. “At first the students avoided me, but eventually they would try to come up and say something to me and were clearly working hard, and it seemed to be working,” one said. But the other ten were unhappy, saying things such as, “teaching with large class sizes of 40 students or more, you can’t really make a difference.” Another criticized the uncooperative attitude of co-teachers: “When  get almost no feedback from the head teacher about whether my lessons were good or bad, how am I supposed to know how to help the students?”

“Korean people seem to be taught how to deal with foreigners and foreign cultures,” some said. “There are people who decide they can’t speak English at all, so they don’t try to communicate… How can I deal with someone like that as a co-workers? It makes me feel like not learning Korean.”