Go East, Young Man:
Pioneer Educator Dr. David Shaffer Reflects
It’s easy to look around Gwangju and convince oneself that it has always been as it is now. The vast majority of expatriates in Gwangju only ever get a snapshot: a year or two in one of the larger cities in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. However, even a little historical curiosity turns up the truth that Gwangju, at least the Gwangju of today, is a recent development. Even a few decades ago, this bustling city would have been unrecognizable. For most, the evidence of this sometimes shocking change must come from textbooks and museums and Google. But for some, it is more a matter of reminiscing over coffee.
Dr. David Shaffer has been in Gwangju since the early 70’s and has been a professor at Chosun University almost as long. When Dr. Shaffer first arrived in Gwangju, he lived in Nongseong-dong, an area in the West District that most would consider a stone’s throw from downtown, but back then, he says with a chuckle that is more thankful for distance than longing, “That was the edge of town, really, my hasuk-jip [home stay] — beyond it was just rice paddies…and that was terrible for mosquitoes.”
Aside from the open sewage troughs on the sides of the roads – which have thankfully disappeared – and the tallest building being only about five stories high – the old tourist hotel – Shaffer says that the most noticeable changes stem from exposure to the West and foreign cultures. In the 70’s and 80’s “Korea was lucky to know about Korea,” let alone anything further afield.
Directly after getting married, Shaffer and his new wife wanted to take a trip to the US to spend time with his family, but the bureaucracy surrounding Korean passports was so impenetrable that applying for a long-term immigration visa, even for a simple three-week trip to Pennsylvania, was the only option available. Now he recognizes that most students have been abroad before they graduate university and many aim to live abroad eventually, for a year or longer.
His first job in Gwangju was vocational workshop training with the Peace Corps. Being one of only four volunteers in the program in Korea, the immediate need for communication with his students spurred him to pick up as much Korean as he could. This has served him well, and he encourages anyone coming to Korea to do the same, claiming that he is “treated and looked at differently from people before they know I speak Korean and afterward.
Shaffer’s motivation for becoming an English teacher was initially an opportunity to continue to live and work in Gwangju rather than a calling. He admits to a recognizable lack of direction in his early twenties that caused him to fall, rather than to gracefully step, into his position at Chosun. He has outgrown his partying days, “some time ago” if he is to be believed, though he took delight in recounting stories of taking the school bus home at the end of the day with other instructors, but being waylaid by intervening drinking places until late at night.
Somewhere along the way, and not without its bumps and pit falls, he discovered a love and a talent for teaching. Now with a curriculum vitae stretching many pages with awards to compliment it, he has dreams of starting up a TESOL certification program and hopefully do some teaching materials development. When asked who would be replacing him at Chosun he quipped that it might be himself and did not have a second best guess.
His years at Chosun University have put him in a unique position to talk about the future of ESL instruction in Gwangju and Korea. He says the greatest success of the Korean education system doesn’t come directly from the schools. Rather it is the parents’ and society’s intense focus on education and dedication to education as a path for self-improvement and social advancement that Shaffer believes is most worthy of praise. Unfortunately this devotion falls short, in his opinion, because of a teaching methodology that places memorization and high-stakes testing center-stage, “We learn by experiencing, and that is almost absent in the Korean system.”
While some have observed that the market for English academies is quickly becoming saturated and predict a rapid decline, Shaffer sees things differently. Korean parents recognize the value of language education from a native speaker, and as Korean public schools cut jobs for international educators, families and students will turn to the private academies to get that education. The only risk to the academy system, he says, is a lack of warm bodies to fill the seats. The birth rate has been dropping recently, and Chosun, as well as universities nationwide, is already beginning to notice a decline in its enrollment. “This coming year, our incoming students are going to be less than before. I think that has been happening already at other universities. Chonnam and Chosun Universities are the biggest and are thought of as being the best in Gwangju, so we feel the effects of things like that last.”
Before we started our interview, Shaffer wanted to clarify that this piece should not be, “He’s done. He’s finished.” And by the end, I was convinced of it. Shaffer has grown in tandem with the small, conservative city he found in 1971 – and like that city, he is far from finished developing.