Korean’s are very gracious.

Always insisting on being helpful, and always expressing their thankfulness for actions shown.

As I study Spanish, and begin to study the cultures I will encounter in South America, I realize how this is applicable as well. In the Spanish language there are many degrees of gratitude.

What about American culture?

I grew up in the South. You were reprimanded quite quickly if you did not use your please & thank yous. But this was taught by my parents as well. Always express to those that help you, compliment you, or add to you in any way that you appreciate what they have done.

Gratitude exceeds just saying thank you.

GANGWON-DO, South Korea -- As kids, one of the first lessons we learn is to take on a problem at its source. And, more often than not, if you can get to the root of what’s ailing you, then you can remedy it and all of its repercussions.

Or, so we were told.

In response to the ever shortening skirts worn to school by Korean middle and high school students, the local assembly in Gangwon province will put the cart before the horse. Or, in this case, the board before the students.

Rather than forcing female students to lengthen their uniform skirts, they have instead proposed spending around $700,000 installing boards in front of some 50,000 desks to block any hint of a view of student's legs in the classrooms.

To be sure, it’s a confusing remedy. Does this say more about student’s skirt length or the school board’s worry of the wondering eyes of district teachers?

To the governments credit, they are employing this unusual redress without asking students to re-dress. This all in the name of avoiding an infringement on the ever expanding freedoms that Koreans are enjoying for the first time since the country’s founding in 1948.

Dear Max,

Thank you for not saying anything when you saw my tattoo today. Instead you left your seat, walked up to me, and just stared closely at it. It was a better approach then the pointing and “what’s that!”, that I received from your classmates.

Thanks,

Your Teacher

I’ve just started reading “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower” (amazon, The Atlantic review).  The book is about an Adjunct professor and how the proliferation of adjunct professors harms students, the professors and the system.

The extra adjunct profs are needed because of an artificial demand for college degrees for jobs that don’t particularly need them.  They aren’t “real professors” and their work typically won’t help them become real professors either.  They are an artificial supply created to handle this artificial supply with no one but the university profiting form the arrangement.