Sexism and Homework

A few months ago I gave an assignment to some of my classes to write a paragraph about a boy and one about a girl. I think the purpose was to get them to use the pronouns "he" and "she." Koreans not getting the subtle distinction that "a" creates, almost all of them wrote about boys' and girls' stereotypes. Here is one example that is a fair representation of what the kids wrote. This is by Jack, who is a fifth-grader and a total dickhead, even beyond what he wrote here. You can read my snide comments in blue (which were not limited to his homework, btw. I'm an equal opportunity sarcastic remarker):



Here are closeups for those who can't read it that small:

This homework also shows something that a lot of the kids do that drives me insane, which is to use a dictionary while doing homework. I really stress to the kids to "use the words you know" and if you don't know the right word, describe it, but they're too lazy. Korean-English dictionaries seem wildly incorrect in terms of part of speech and citing common-use words instead of arcane or obsolete words, so I get kids using words both in writing and speech that even American kids their age don't know, often wrongly.

I used to have a student who is one of the many, many students at our hagwon who, because of her age, was put into a class at a much higher level than she was capable of. She had no idea how to put together an English sentence and her vocabulary was quite limited, so I think she used the dictionary for almost every word in every sentence she ever wrote. Consequently, everything she wrote was utter nonsense. It's sad. Then she got moved up. I want to shake Heather and slap her around, Airplane! style, for doing that so often to kids, simply because their parents want the kids to be "leveled up"--for status reasons only.

On another note, don't judge my teaching abilities on this one piece of homework! This kid was in a level C (2nd grade level) class at the time (he's since been moved with the whole class to level D--another example of the above), but was making the same mistakes as kids in much lower levels. You can see that beyond his ridiculous vocabulary, syntax, and grammar errors, he didn't capitalize sentences or write in paragraph form. Gr. I'm really good about grinding things like that into my students' brains, but some kids just don't learn or are too lazy or forgetful to actually practice it. Some of my kids' writing homework is really quite good. I've even had some cases where I didn't even have to make any corrections. I love it when that happens.