(The subject of the titular verb is "sociology." The unchecked part implies that nothing so mundane as an education in the field checks my curiosity and speculation).
A few weeks ago, an ex-student of mine invited me to his school concert, and it was such an experience that I have at least two, perhaps three blog posts to publish as a result. This is the first, and it is pretty much awesome about Korea's support for the arts in schools.
The kids I saw were doing music and dance stuff with their whole school all day. Their teachers and administrators attended and supported them, and it was like a party for the performing arts. Coming as I do from a country that seems to cut budgets for the arts every month, it was wonderful to see all the students rocking out, many of them dancing.
First of all, it was a side of them I very rarely get to see. My students spend all the time I see them in class doing (home)work, taking tests, or falling asleep while they're supposed to be doing one of the other two. I work for a hagwon, so there's not really the geographic cohesion that other teachers have, which makes it likely that they'll see their students on off-days, out and about and being normal. I hear, sometimes, about their extracurricular lives, but I have only seen two students out in the world in all the time I've been here (now three, but only by invitation, and it was at a school function). So it was great to see them not just doing something non-academic, but having such a good time. Those who weren't performing were cheering wildly and having fun of their own. Some people had made a video for in between sets that showed all the different groups preparing their stuff, which was fun to watch, even for me (though I didn't understand it, it met all the requirements of such things: exaggerated movements, fun pop music as background, sped up dancing of a ridiculous nature, teachers acting silly with their students). It was nice to know that somewhere in their hectic lives, they are having fun.
Two, many of them are very talented, and it was awesome just to be in the audience! I was especially impressed by the dancing, which was not part of my performing or observing experience in high school. Several groups and one notable individual performed very demanding routines, and many of them were boys. Perhaps it has been only my experience, but in that, the gender divide in the West does not encourage this quite the same way. There was a particularly fantastic group from the second grade of the middle school (about 8th or 9th grade US, I think) who were five boys, four of whom acted as puppets and the fifth who was the marionette master. It was remarkable. They were extremely coordinated and athletic, and the crowd loved it. Maybe now, if I were back in the States, I'd see us doing more of this as talent shows on t.v. become more popular and star more dancers, but when I was their age, that was... uncommon. I'm happy to see performance doing so well here as a part of kids' experience in school.
My student is a guitarist and was on last, performing with his bandmates two songs, a K-pop number I actually know and like (!) and an American song (surprise!). There were some technical difficulties, but generally, I thought they did very well. (The music bits reminded me a lot of pops concerts at my high school, so that part was sort of expected - but they did REALLY well!)
The sociological component to all this that burst out of me so forcefully that I found myself taking notes during the concert (you can take the student out of the U of C, but...) has to do with gender relations, double standards, and what constitutes "sexy" versus "sexual" across cultures. It's a bit of a jumble and I'm still putting it together (some stuff got in the way of my together-putting, which I will talk about in a different, totally unrelated blog post, soon!) but as soon as I have something worth committing to... screen (?) I will have it up here.
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