spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring

     One of the most important ideologies of Buddhism is ‘not to kill something alive.’ In the movie ‘spring, summer, fall, winter, and spring,’ to be more specific, in the part named ‘spring’, I could watch the story of a Buddhist monk and a young monk, which is closely related to the ideology I mentioned above.

     Well, I don’t want to talk about ‘how important the living things are, and the reason why we should not kill those precious things.’ That is common sense not only to Buddhist, but also to all the other people. We’ve already learned such things and I think we are old enough, so I don’t have to talk about the topic here. In this movie, the most impressive part was the way that the monk used to teach his young monk.

     People can’t fully understand other’s situation or feeling unless they are in the same situation. The old monk knew the fact very well, and that may be the reason why he hung a big stone on the boy monk’s body. I have same experience that young monk. When I was about 8or 9 years old, a new student came to my school. I expected a lot at the thought of making a new friend. When the new student came in to the classroom, however, I disappointed a lot. She was somewhat different from the feature of friend I thought. She was a mentally retarded so needed a lot of help from other students. Every behavior of her was slow. She ate lunch slowly, talked slowly, and walked slowly. She was totally different from me who was impatient and active. My homeroom teacher asked me to take care of the new friend. I hesitated a lot because I felt stuffy of her, but I couldn’t reject my teacher’s request. Since then, I spent most of the school life with her. At first, I tried to be a good friend to her, but I was too young at that time to carefully concern others’ situation. Soon, I gave up to be a good and kind friend to her. I started to ignore her, and naturally, she became an outsider in our class. And one day, my teacher heard about my ignorance toward her and asked me to see her after school. For quite a long period of time, she didn’t say anything to me. And then, she ordered me to take of my glasses. I couldn’t see anything, and it was so stuffy. My teacher said, “If you take off your glasses you can’t see things well, so you can’t do anything. Your new friend has similar difficulties. She also feels stuffy but she can’t do anything because of her difficulties. You have to understand her.” I already knew that I had to help handicapped people, at that time. But I strongly felt what was wrong with my behavior after I myself be in the same situation with my new friend.

Children labor force Exploitation (In Mr. Moon's class)

     About a couple of years ago, my classmates and I were talking about the multinational corporations in social study class. There were many problems related to the topic. Among many issues, exploitation of children labor force became the hottest issue in that class. After the discussion, our teacher introduced a book named “Made in Vietnam” to us. It was story of ‘Lan’ who had to start to work in early age because of the poor economic conditions of her family. She was only 14, but had to work without holiday, in dark and musty factory. Lan’s tough life is not an imaginary story. We can find many other similar cases in the real world.

     Lives of children who live in poor countries, so called ‘the Third World,’ are actually as hard as the life of Lan. Children’s workplace is dangerous and dirty. In worst case, their workplaces are full of harmful gases from chemicals. And the owners of such factories are mostly multinational corporations. To be brief, those companies are abusing children’s labor force to maximize their profits. Some people may say that “Why don’t they escape from such poor and harmful workplaces and find a new job? They can refuse to work, can’t they?” Those who say like this are the ones who didn’t understand the situation of those children completely. They didn’t have choice but to work in such environment to survive. An immediate need of living expenses took priority over their health.

     Fortunately, many people realized the seriousness of this problem and are making effort to help little children. For example, when Nike’s illegal exploitation of children labor force became big news, people, who were outraged with the company’s brutality, boycotted. Eventually, Nike surrendered to consumers and hiring rate of children evidently decreased. In some cases, a country rejects to import goods which are made at the hands of little boys and girls. Actually, US government rejected to import clothes of a certain company which exploited children labor force. As we can see in these cases, people restrict multinational corporations from abusing poor children. However, I wonder whether the restriction is appropriate or not.

     People are not only restricting MNCs from exploiting children, but also restricting those children from the only way to survive. We should not forget the fact that there was no way for those little kids and their family to earn money in immediate need, except working at such poor condition to get unreasonable pay. The best way is to provide those children environment in which they can study at school and don’t have to work. However, I think that way is somewhat unrealistic. Then, we have to choose the second best way. Since those children have no other ways but to work, I think we should not prevent them from working, rather we should try to provide them with better working environment. MNCs could exploit little children in unhealthy environment because the host government assumed the attitude of an onlooker. If the government takes a firm attitude toward foreign companies, children of the host countries will be able to work in better environment. Moreover, we can help those children by teaching developed technologies. Children who learned new technologies will be able to get more professional jobs in the future.

     I don’t deny the fact that people already made a lot of effort to help little children in the Third World to rescue them from the exploitation by multinational corporations. However, before we help them, I think we have to fully understand their situation first and have to find the most appropriate solutions.

    

If I were the principal of KMLA

  

     There are many things that I’m not satisfied with KMLA. Although students make effort to change things, there’s almost nothing that is changed. There are so many inconveniences, so I may not be able to tell all those things in a piece of paper. So, I will talk about very small parts of problems in KMLA.

     Every week starts with boring, drowsy, and meaningless 애국조회. Every student wears heavy but cold 예복. Furthermore, some orchestra members have to climb up to the gym with heavy instruments on the back and backpacks on the front. We spend our precious time for 애국조회 only to sing the school song and national anthem. However, the most annoying thing on Monday is class meeting in 8^th period. School and teachers never reflect students’ opinion that we discussed at class meeting, though they ‘gave’ us time to discuss on school’s problem. In my opinion, recent serious problems are vending machine because many students experienced that disgusting worms came out from the coffee. However, teachers didn’t gave us chance to find the solution on our own, but just noticed that the school can’t do anything because they don’t have money. Furthermore, they progress school constructions without asking to students. The school decides where the receipt from school concert will be used. I think it is nonsense that teachers decide everything by themselves although the ones who spend their precious time to prepare for the concert are students. Class meeting is merely a pretense in our school.

     The second thing is that it is almost as though KMLA sacrifices everything from practicality to comfort to get its students to the best universities and colleges. And yet, KMLA seems to fall short in that as well. The EOP and small-sized classes KMLA boasts of is contradicted by the total inadvertence to EOP and the forty students per Biology and Psychology classes. EOP can be effective when students voluntarily keep the policy. However, in fact students can’t keep it voluntarily because it seems like the school forces them to use English. The most dumfounded thing is EOP helper policy. EOP helpers have to fill their quarter or they will get penalty points. From this policy, we can find out that the school has premise that students will not keep EOP. I think such policy will be useless and it will just worsen the relationship between school and students.

     So, if I were the principal of KMLA, I would bring renovation to this place. Even though this place or the system itself is a heap of shame that should be beheaded, students here are smart and most teachers are ready to listen to what we say. In poor surrounding, I believe that not only me but also other students will make their every effort to change the school. If I were the principal of KMLA, I will make the school totally for students.

      

Reading Journal for

     I heard about the movie ‘the Shawshank Redemption’ many times. Many people saw the movie and told me that they were touched by the movie. They said that it is one of the best movies they have ever seen and recommended me to see the movie. But I didn’t have chance, so I couldn’t. I didn’t even know the existence of original of the movie and this was my first time of reading about the Shawshank redemption. I felt a lot through the book. Among those various topics I could find in the book, I want to talk about the danger of ‘being accustomed to.’

     There are many memorable parts in this novel. When Norton found out the hole behind the poster of a woman can be an example of it. One of those impressive parts is too trivial to be impressive, but I can’t forget it. When Red is paroled, everything of the outside world was unfamiliar to him. He couldn’t even go to the bathroom without checking to his boss, because it was natural thing in the Shawshank. Red lived in the jail for several decades, and he got used to check to the boss before he goes to the bathroom. This story is very trivial and minor part of the whole story, but it gave me a shock. ‘What am I different from Red?’

     I’m not in the jail, of course. But, sometime, I feel like I’m in the jail because my daily routine is so monotonous. I wake up at 6 a.m. every morning, go to school, go back home, do some homework, and go to bed at 11 p.m. This is all. Sometimes, the day before quiz, I study for it. Same schedule repeats over and over again. I always want something different and special. Contradictorily, on the other hand, I may feel fear of being different. I became too familiar with my monotonous but safe life. I think although a chance to escape from my daily routine is given to me, I may not be able to willingly accept the chance. I may hesitate for a while. And if I’m not brave enough to get the chance, there will be no change, no challenge, and no fun in my life. That is the danger of ‘being accustomed to.’

     The danger of ‘being accustomed to’ is applied not only to me but also to everyone in this world. Most people prefer safe and stable things. They don’t want to take a risk and just want to follow the normal procedure in which they know the result of it. To develop, to live meaningful life, I think we should not be accustomed to our unchanging lives. We should be prepared for the small and big changes in our lives.