For several years, there has been controversy whether public schools in Korea should implement teacher evaluation system or not. Its initial purpose is to get the better quality of education by improving teachers’ ability to instruct. However, the critics doubt whether it is really adaptable and appropriate in Korean education system. Personally, I also think it is not suitable for the following reasons. Firstly, the necessity of evaluating teachers is not clear. Secondly, students are not qualified to access teachers. Therefore, I disagree with the idea that public schools in Korea should ask students to evaluate their teachers.Of course, if it is adapted well, there are several benefits for both students and teachers. First of all, it is good for teachers to look back themselves. In Korea, Public teachers are granted to teach students until they retire. So, after some years becoming teacher, it is easy for some teachers to be unmotivated. Secondly, students become more engaged in education. Since they have to evaluate teachers, they have to pay more attention in class. In turn, it will bring positive effects on studying.However, it is too naïve to think this system will work well bringing these positive effects. The first reason is that Korean teachers are not to be evaluated for the following explanations. Firstly, In Korea, there has been a hierarchy between teachers and students. In detail, Koran students have been thought to show respect to teachers so students’ grading can be considered as impoliteness. Thus, evaluating system will somehow damaging the hierarchy between teachers. Secondly, teachers in Korea are already proved to be a good teacher. To be specific, it is needed to pass the nation-wide examination to become a teacher in Korea. Moreover, applying for the exam requires the certificate, which demonstrates they studied hard when they are in college.The second reason is that even if the necessity is demonstrated there are not many students who are qualified for evaluating. To take my case as an example, there was a peculiar history teacher who had his own teaching way in my high school. Before his lecture, we had to preview the text and be ready to answer his questions. If the student couldn’t answer, she had to raise her hands about ten minutes. For me, it helped me a lot to study the subject in depth. However, most of the students, who hadn’t previewed, were sick of getting punishment and argue he teaches poorly. In this situation there is no chance that the history teacher would get good evaluation even though it is students who don’t pay efforts.There is a saying, ‘all that glitter is not gold.’ Even if the primary motive looks good, no one can be sure that implementing the system will bring the positive results. This is because there are so many problems to be tackled before the implementation. Firstly, the appropriateness of the system should be demonstrated. Is it really necessary to evaluate ‘already evaluated’ teachers evoking possibilities of damaging hierarchical status? Secondly, the grading abilities of students should be complemented. To help students’ proper evaluation, thorough evaluating system should be based on. Without these considerations, implementing the system is not much different from ‘glittering’ garbage.
더블스페이스하기The stranger is a story about Meursault, the stranger, who lives a little bit different life compared to ordinary people. It is because he is living the absurd life. To talk about the overall story, his mother died at first. He showed little emotion for her. Next, he met a woman, Marie. He spent happy time with her from the day after the funeral. During the vacation with her and his neighbor, Raymond, Meursault shot the guy who is the brother of Raymond’s girl friend. By this murder, Meursault was arrested and sent to jail. His lawyer tried to help him but Meursault stuck to his strange responses. Therefore, he is condemned to execution.Going back to the absurd life, it is formed when man’s desire for meaning meets irrational world. Those who face absurd life can choose various ways to confront this situation. One way is to suicide. Therefore, he can stop pursuing the meaning of life. Another way is to hope and believe the world is rationale. There are some people who do believe this. However, Meursault accept the fact there is this absurdity. If one can realize that there is no higher meaning, he or she can get true ‘freedom’, ‘revolt’ and ‘passion.’ With this freedom, Meursault shaped his own value, took his responsibility and lived his life based on what he think is meaningful.This book has two parts divided by the Meursault’s murder. To talk about the ending first, on the trial of his murder, his execution was declared. After that, he had a chance to meet a priest who offered a pray for him. However, he became wild against to the priest facing the epiphany. In detail, the priest believes the life after death, which makes him live ‘like a dead man.’ On the other hand, Meursault himself has no hope to the afterlife. So, he is sure about himself and his life. He has been living every day, every minute of his life with his own way. He said “I had been right, I was still right, I was always right.” To summarize, facing his death, he suddenly realized why he had been living like a stranger.Knowing what the mindset of Meursault was, you can better understand the very first incident. At first, there was his mother’s death. Unlike normal people, he showed little emotion for his mother’s death. Instead, he’s just talking about how other people reacted to him. What is more, he said he felt no feeling because he was too tired. If you didn’t know he’s point of view and the way he is living, it may be difficult to understand why he is not mentioning grief and sorrow for her mother. When I first read this part, I thought he is very weird. However, now I know that it was because he thinks there is no need to cry for one’s death. In a word, why do we sorry for the people who fully lived their life? As Meursault said, his mother lived everyday with her passion. So in his point of view, there was no spot everyone including himself had to be sad.What I still don’t understand is the part he shot the Arab guy. Normally, Meursault lives his live with his own decision and choice. Therefore, he takes his responsibility. However, when he shot him, he is saying like it was due to the circumstance not his own decision. The sun was blazing and he describes it using ‘symbols.’ For him, it was the atmosphere which made him shoot the Arab. Still, he is taking responsibility of the action, killing the Arab, but is shooting under the stress understandable? He was not a mischievous man before. We can see that based on the facts that he had this good relationship with Marie and his boss gave him a chance to promote. Then, how come he suddenly shot a guy who is not directly related to himself? Maybe one possible answer is the author, Albert Camus, wanted Meursault to really face the death. By that, he can better realize the absurdity.Reading this book, I could think about the meaning of the life. I think there is no time for people to think about the meaning of life. We just live day by day. Every day is started opening one’s eyes and finished closing. Of course we have our goals and values. But does that from the deep reflection? Most of them might be from what we’ve thought or read. There is no profound contemplation of us, lives and the meaning of those. By and large, the stranger is meaningful since it gives us to think about our life once again.
“The Allegory of the Cave” (The Republic, Book 7)‘The Allegory of the Cave’ is a short story where Plato gives his brother a lecture about the enlightenment or ignorance of human condition. He assumes some prisoners stuck inside a cave. Behind them is a fire and in front of is a screen. As tied tightly, all they can see is nothing but the shadow play by operators. Therefore, shadows are reality for them. Then, Plato supposes the release of one prisoner. He would be overwhelmed by the fact that what he has believed as the actuality is nothing but a shadow. Then, he is forced to go outside the cave. It would be more difficult for him to confront everything outside. However, he would be enlightened by observing shadows, reflections, and finally, the sun. ‘The ignorance of human condition’ is highlighted when the released one goes back to the cave. Since it is dark inside, he would lose his sight a while. Then, the other prisoners would make fun of him thinking his eyes are damaged and never try to be free to go outside.What I found interesting is that the philosophy of this story is well adapted to numerous things. In this story, there are four phases through which the untied prisoner goes. The first stage is when what he believes is what he sees, the shadows. The second phase comes when he senses what the objects of the shadows are. The third is the time he goes out facing the real world. The last part is when he observes the sun. One simple adaptation is to think of metaphysics of an apple. The first phase is a picture or shadow of apples. Then, real apples are the second stage. Up till this point there can be numerous kinds of apples. It can be bitten or rotten as well as big or small. The next phase is about mathematical forms such as the average size of the apples. The fourth is a higher form like the absolute concept of the apple.Another example related to the first phase is the ‘feral child.’ It means a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age. Historically, there have been numerous records of these children. However, what shocked me is the most recent case in 2009. A Russian girl, five years old at that time, had spent her entire life locked in a room with cats and dogs, and no heat or water. According to the police, when she was found, she could not speak Russian, would jump at the door and bark when caretakers left, and had "clear attributes of an animal and jumped at people.” I think this case is very similar to the prisoners in the cave. Both of the girl and prisoners are locked and don’t know what is on the outside. What is worse in the case is that she doesn’t even know how to speak. Witnessing the real case in phase one is totally different from just imagining the hypothesis cave. It really touched my mind.To further discuss about the simile, the first phase is like the saying, what we see is what we believe. However, I also believe that we see what we believe, which is related to the last part of the story, after the freed one goes back into the cave. In detail, even though all they see is the same shadow, there exist differences among what each prisoner perceives, which are based on what he believes. To conclude, when asked to choose to be either of them, I selected to live miserably in reality rather than to live happily in the cave. However, thinking of it now, in the perspective of existentialism, living joyfully in the cave can be a good option. Anyway, existentialism assumes that there is no higher meaning which can be interpreted as the outside the cave.
Hermann Hesse - DemianChapter 2: CainAs usual as in other novels of Hermann Hesse, there are two main characters, Demian and Sinclair. They are teenage boys and on the way going home, they talk about what they were taught in school, the story of Cain and Abel. Demian says that the story of Cain can be interpreted in a different way from what they were taught. Sinclair shows some interests as Demian elaborates his idea. However, after a while, he thinks Demian is just making a fool of him.The original story of Cain and Abel is as followed. There were two sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. When they sacrificed what they thought valuable to God, Abel’s sheep was accepted but Cain’s grains were refused. Based on the result, Cain got jealous of Abel so that he killed his brother. According to the Bible, God punished Cain with the mark and his family had to leave the country. However, as Cain worried the revenge of other people, God also gave him a mercy to protect Cain from any potential attacks.On the other hand, Demian thinks Cain might be a fine fellow. That is because he thinks it’s a paradox that the murderer who killed his brother gets awarded as an untouchable person. According to his new interpretation, from the beginning, the mark was there. It was not the physical mark. Rather, it was Cain’s outstanding atmosphere which remarks him to others. Then, the murder happened. Even though the murder itself is true, the reason underneath could be reasonable such as a self defense. However, after the murder happened, people made up this story about the mark. To be specific, they were afraid to attack Cain so they say ‘we cannot attack him because he is marked by God’. He comments ‘people with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.’I think Demian’s explanation is quite convincing. It is very easy for the facts to be distorted. Like in history, it is always winners’ point of view. Those who have powerTo talk about the story telling method, I think choosing Sinclair as a narrator is very effective for readers to follow the story. To be specific, Sinclair is described as an ordinary and familiar style of student who rarely like learning in school. On the other hand, Demian is portrayed as a scholastic student. The situation is that Demian gives lecture to Sinclair who is less smart than him. By using this indirect way to convey the story of Cain, readers feel less like
FishTo tell about this book, it is about a manager who managed to revive her team with four secret answers. It was given to me by my mother about 6 years ago. Those days, she bought me various kinds of English books from Sherlock Holmes to love story and it was one of them. Most of the book, I read them with interest. However, this book, Fish, was not the case. In detail, every time I tried to read it, I couldn’t focus on and anyway I couldn’t understand it either. Thinking of it now, the words used is not that difficult but maybe it was because the story of it was so boring to me since I was so young. Back then, I tried to read same pages several times and I gave up reading this book.Time passed by and I became an undergraduate student majoring Business Administration. I was having some rest during my winter vacation reading books. Then, I saw this book, Fish, again. It was thin and the title looked interesting. What kind of book has the name of it as fish? I picked it up and looked t contents. There were lots of things attracting me: First guarantee financial, the courage to change and choose your attitude. It seemed that this book is talking about working environment, attitude or something like that. These were so boring to me about 6 years ago, which made me doze off. However, they are one of my favorites now since they are highly related to my major, business. So I started to read it and it took no more than 3 days to read even though I was reading another.The contents of it are very simple but contain life time lessons. It is a story about Mary Jane who happened to change her department to the 3rd floor called “Toxic energy dump.” The people working there are gloomy, hopeless and discouraging. It wasn’t that they do not work hard but since the overall mood of the 3rd floor was blue, no one wanted to work with them. Becoming the manager of the floor, she knows that she has to do something for change but doesn’t know what it is. Then, one day she had a chance toish shop where it has aliveness, energy and happy workers and customers. She was curious about the secrets of the place and one of the fish guys, Lonnie, taught her the four secrets: choose your attitude, play, be present, make their day.Among the four elements, I want to talk about two of them which are to ‘choose your attitude’ and ‘make their day.' First of all, choosing your attitude means that you cannot change your work but you can decide how to deal with it. After she learns this, on the 3rd floor hangs a picket saying CHOOSE YOUR ATTITUDE followed by MENU CHOICE FOR TODAY with two faces, one with smiling and the other frowning. This made me think. ‘Yeah, what matters is what you think it is matters.’ Personally, I think I’ve already known this secret even though I’ve never thought it as a saying. For example, I don’t choose my day to be happy but, I am used to thinking positive and happy things and forgetting about bad things. Moreover, I know that most of the worries are causee cannot change or already happened, I seldom worries something. In short, I was living choosing my menu with smiling face under unconsciousness.Secondly, making their day is the other thing I want to talk about. At the fish place, fish guys give each customer a wonderful experience with fish. They throw the fish up in the air and shout funny jokes such as ‘five crabs flying away to Wisconsin’ or ‘one salmon flying away to Minnesota.’ The alive and active energy of fish workers make the customers happy and who doesn’t want to be happy? They put in mind their happy memory in the fish market and come back to the place. To summarize, making their day means to give the customers special experience or to make them happy so that the day become their day. I think this one is very simple, clear and at the same time very important. Regardless of what I’ll do in the future from manager to C.E.O., this secret will make a huge difference in the work place. There can be both win-win situations beca or we make the customers pleasant, they’ll come back for the business again and it will make me or us happy. What is more, I also think this is not limited to the business environment. When we think about our daily lives, I can make my friend’s day or my mother’s day. For instance, if I put a little bit more effort, I can make their day too. If I be nice preparing dinner instead of Mom, then it’s that I made her day. By doing so as similar to what we’ve just covered before, choose your attitude, we can live our lives happily.I think with this little book, I learned more lessons than my thick major books give me. One of the reasons is that this book gave me some practical ways to make my life better. Just after I finished reading this book, I was so impressed that I wrote down four formulas down at my scheduler for me to see every day. I wish that I can implement these secrets to my working environment when I become a manager. Furthermore, as I mentioned before I can use them in my daioo.