Preschool Woes

After nearly two months of staying home from school, my daughter returned to her preschool yesterday. With the exception of my daugther, all the other kids have continued attending school daily in spite of how much the virus has been spreading over here. We kept her home partly out of worry over catching and/or spraeding the virus, but also because we had gotten a little weary of some recurring issues we've had with this school.

Our voluntary self-quarantine was a welcome change for us, and in many ways was a kind of experiment. We are working on coordinating an informal collective "unschool." This is something I've been meaning to write about for quite a while, but I have too much to say about it (and the context of this whole undertaking). For the time being, I want to reflect on the changes afoot and our interpretation of those dynamics pushing us forward.

Movements in the Arrangement

Originally, we never wanted to send our kids to preschool. We are fortunate that our work does not neccessitate childcare. I never liked the idea of sending our kids off for most of the day to be taken care of by someone else, especially while they are still basically infants. As commonplace as preschool is, it requires a significant degree of trust among parents and teachers (and the kids!). But I am not very trusting. No one knows our kids better than we do, and when they are still babies, it's difficult to entrust them into someone else's care knowing that in spite of their efforts they will not be as sensitive and responsive to their feelings. This reservation of trust is compounded by the generally critical and even cynical attitude I have developed about education, having spent nearly half of my life working and studying in that field.

Here in Korea, nearly everyone goes to preschool. Preschools have long waiting lists with official laws regarding rules and criteria for preferred admission. The vast majority of preschools (and ALL SCHOOLS) in Korea are privately run and operated; many of which are ordinary for-profit corporations. Yay... But the effect of all of this is that during the day, there are no other children on the playgrounds. I used to take my daughter out to play in nearby parks or at indoor playplaces, and usually we were the only ones there. Of course, once school is out they are filled with kids! My daughter was always a very friendly and outgoing (albeit sometimes bashful) little kid. At some point we realized how much she wanted and needed consistent interactions with kids her age, so we decided to put her in preschool when she was three.

Her first school was not amazing, but it was decent. It was a small preschool within the complex of the apartments across the street from ours. We were very lucky, because her teacher was exemplary. She reminded me so much of my kindergarten teacher, and from the standpoint of an education researcher, she stood out to me as a model of someone with the apptitude, sensitivity, and interest in early childhood education--to say nothing of her skills and tact.

Our daughter grew so much there, gaining so many social skills. Of course, she picked up a few undesirable behaviors, or at least attempted mimicking them. She also discovered the world of candy and junk food, much to our chagrin. But what was nice about that school is that all the kids who went there lived in and near our neighborhood. After school, we would all just go play in the playround for hours. We made friends with some of the other families, and also became close with some other random neighborhood kids. Now that we have been in this other school for about a year, which unfortunately coincided with the pandemic, I find that I really miss that arrangement and all the people we were involved with during that time. There are certain neighborhood kids who were five or six years older than my daughter who would take care of and include all the little ones in play on the playground. I felt so proud of them, and I still see behaviors in my daughter now that she picked up from those playground role models. I have no way to contact them, like so many of my old students I grew so fond of, which is such a pity to me.

That particular school was only for kids 3 and under, so after spending one year there we had to change schools. All the other families were frantic trying to get their kids into other preschools in the neighborhood (there are TONS). Initially, we had also considered sending our daughter to one of the schools nearby in hopes of getting into the same one as some of her friends. It's lucky that we did not, however. Shortly after the new school year started, there was a big "scandal" (if you can call it that) at one of our candidate preschools. A teacher had been caught beating a child with a metal container used to hold chopsticks. What is disturbing about the whole thing is, not only did the preschool try to cover it up, but when the family pressed charges, some of the other parents were publically vocal about that family in question "taking it too far." The reasoning here was that rocking the boat like that could mean that the rest of them would have to find new schools for their kids to attend, which would be nearly impossible at that point. Welcome to Korea.

We did not expect something like this to happen to our daughter, but we were certainly wary. Things like this happen too often here. You might say this kind of negligence is an unfortunate side effect of private education being such a big industry here. Our main concern at the time was not wanting to send our daughter to some big preschool. Also, we wanted to avoid the mentality of parents like those mentioned above and the prevalent ethos of which it is a part. So we ultimatley became a part of the co-operative preschool my daughter currently attends.

We had long known about this co-op, but didin't seriously consider it at first because of how far it is from our house (about 20km one-way). But we were charmed by it ultimately. It appeared to be exactly the kind of school we wanted for our children and ourselves: a small, intentional community of families engaging in a collaborative, DIY, "community school" project. There are many things about this school that we have loved, especially some of the people, but after being involved for just a short time it became clear that it was not at all what we had expected it to be.

Let me first describe some of the peculiarities of this school and the things that we do like about it. First of all, we were super lucky again that our daughter's teacher is also an amazing person. One of the main difficulties in making our decision to leave this school was wanting to still be involved with this person; that is, for her to keep "teaching" our daughter. This really is a shame, but the other negative aspects of this school are too weighty for us to stay.

In this school, the kids talk with the adults informally (which is not the norm in Korea). They use no honorific forms when speaking with them, and in fact, all the adults--teachers and parents--have nicknames. Mine is "giraffe," and our teacher's is "Do Re Mi." They play outside every single day, rain or shine, so long as the air quality is not too bad. Today it was -12°C when I dropped my daughter off, and they were outside playing in the dirt. At this school, kids get DIRTY, which is also a rarity in Korea. When we go for walks with my in-laws, they are constatly barking at our kids not to touch anything--no touching the ground, and certainly not sitting on the ground! There is an open lot next to the school where they keep a garden and play in the mud. There is a small mountain nearby where we've built some hammocks and other things for the kids to play on. The actual location of the school is not that great. It is surrounded by a bunch of scrapyards and unkempt, makeshift workshops. A restaurant nearby is constantly burning their trash (which is illegal...). There are a few walking paths throughout the neighborhood, but there is so much litter everywhere. We have reported a few places a number of times for chucking all their junk into the walking paths. Along these walkways there are lots of little gardens and things (like there are everywhere in Korea), but for some reason these people also litter like crazy where they are growing their food. There is a massive landfill nearby so there are always tons of garbage trucks shoving their way through traffic.

The food the school serves is of very high quality. It turns out that most of the families here came to this school because their kids have allergies. There are no grade levels or classes. Our daughter's "teacher" is just her primary "caregiver." Kids are free to roam and do what they want at the school. There is no lesson planning, and they do not attempt to make the kids learn anything in particular. They do projects and activities that have themes, but there is no formal curriculum here--no workbooks, units, etc.

Apart from the duties of the teachers, all the work is done by the families. There is an elected board that oversees official business, and all the cleaning and whatever else is done by each family in turn. There are lots of meetups and things, although, because of the virus, we didn't get to do much of this. In the spring I did have a chance to do a little workshop with the other dads and the teachers. We played a bunch of outdoor games with the teachers like the kids do, then had dinner and drank late into the night. Again, welcome to Korea! >_<

This school is a "community childcare" preschool, which is involved with this bigger organization that founded this whole model some ten years ago. But having attended for some time, it is clear to me that at our school in particular, the "community" aspect is taken for granted. I would even argue that there is not really an intentional community here, apart from the superficial notion that we are all a "community" because our kids go to the same school. This place has a serious "communication" problem, which is the main reason we have decided to move on and start our own "unschool."

Taking "Community" for Granted & Problem Avoidance

When we first joined this co-op, we anticipated that the other members would be like-minded, or at least share some kind of core values that motivated and animated their shared activities. But this does not seem to be the case. On the one hand, this school seems to associate itself with keywords like #natural, #eco-friendly, #organic, #sustainability, etc. (hashtags intentional), yet these seem more like vague attempts at branding. The school only uses high-quality organic food because so many of these kids have serious allergies and skin conditions. But apart from that there doesn't seem to be anything else about this school or the people in it that would make any of the above hashtags applicable. When there are gatherings, for example, we will have food delivered, which usually involves massive amounts of wasted packaging. One family recently just bought a massive Escalade, which has no practical purpose in the densely urban part of the world where we live (and certainly no eco-friendly motive behind it). I know that some of the other families do share some kind of environmental concerns, but this is not what the school is doing; or, I should say, these are not values that animate the organization of this "community." What I have come to realize is that these things are kind of status symbols for some people; that is, this #allorganic, #natural #community school is, for some families, an elitist form of conspicuous consumption.

This question of values has been especially important for our family in particular. Not because we expect the other families to all be in agreement, of course. In fact, that is an impossibility, and the facade of agreement or tacit agreement (or groupthink) undermines the possibility of genuine "communication" or "being and becoming a community" in general. In our year at this school, we have repeatedly sufferred the side-effects of a serious lack of "communication" and shared values through which to evaluate problem situations. Here is a salient example.

Ambivalence Toward Gender Sterotypes and the Status Quo

One day at the dinner table, our daughter started randomly talking about how boys are supposed to marry girls and other things related to gender roles. We told her that people of the same sex can get married if they want, and that people don't HAVE TO get married at all. She started to tear up, telling us that at school she learned that boys marry girls, and so on. We were VERY concerned, as you might imagine. It turns out that at school they had started a new activity--a wedding simulation. It would span the entire month and they would go through the whole process of planning and carrying out an entire wedding--everything from proposing, picking out and sending wedding invitations, picking out a dress. EVERYTHING.

Our thought at the time was WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS??? Who in their right mind would think this is an appropriate thing to do with a bunch of preschoolers? We spoke with our daughter's teacher about it and she immediately realized how bizarre the whole thing was. It was not her idea, but she said she had not considered how inappropriate it was when the idea was proposed by one of the other teachers. I think she felt a little embarrssed even, because, yeah, it's a pretty terrible thing to do at a preschool. Anyway, we felt reassured after talking with her. But this was only the beginning of a long, frustrating ordeal that has yet to really consummate for us.

We don't know what actually happened as result of our raising concern over this whole wedding thing, but it apparently caused a huge conflict within the "community." What we do know is that our teacher had a meeting with the other teachers and explained what we had talked about with her. One of the other teachers, whose idea this wedding thing was, was enraged by the fact that we newcomers would dare criticize her. Apparently some of the the other "senior" members, that is, parents who have been in the "community" for a long time, felt that it was inappropriate for us to have stirred the pot. The wedding was prompty called off, but as a result, some big uncomfortable thing was set off behind the scenes. To this day no one has clarified ANYTHING for us about what the big deal was about all of this. There was an official statement released by the chair of the board urging people to engage in only "healthy gossip." What I have gathered is that our raising concern over this ridiculous wedding thing flamed some of the other "senior" members who took it upon themselves to say and do some really shitty things behind our back. The fact that we have been kept in the dark about all of this is absurd. Some other families seemed to share our opinion, but no one really stepped in and spoke up about it. WEIRDLY, nobody talked openly about it at all--not to us directly, and not in the groupchats or on the online forums we use.

All of this is beside the fact that a mock wedding is a plainly inappropriate thing to do with a bunch of preschoolers. To have people resist this fact just because of ego or because of something as benign as rank (within a "community" no less), evidinces a serious disfunction within that organization. We saw this reoccur in various forms althroughout our time at this school. The general condition, as I observed it, is that of problem or adaptation avoidance. The goal is to keep an even keel, to play nice, to not step on anyone's toes (unless they suggest you call of your stupid fucking wedding game, then it's gloves off...?). But this is obviously not how a community works! A community IS a community through communication, which is not just the sending and receiving of messages. It's an imaginative engagement in shared activity--in problematic situations especially. That is, a community IS a community through the ways it communicates THROUGH problems. It is in these situations that it embodies its values to find creative solutions to problems--or more fundamentally, to appreciate the conditions of not yet realized problematics.

It is clear that this organization avoids problems in favor of conditions congenial to the status quo. A major factor of this dynamic is the fact that this school has a grossly unnecessary and innappropriate corporate structure. For a small preschool of twenty-something kids, there are six teachers and an 8-person board of directors. The VAST MAJORITY of energy that goes into running this place has nothing at all to do with our kids and their education, but with concerns and interests totally remote to the actual everyday experience within that school. With this awkward corporate structure, there is a vague displacement of authority. Someone has it, but not me, not you. It's a convenient way for no one to take responsibility about anything, for no one to be held accountable, but while also have "order." But this is a "community," right? Is it really necessary for us to have official channels of decision-making? Do we need the diffusion of liability this stucture affords?

In my opinion, this corporate structure is anithetical to the kind of cooperative, community-based learning project this school (and the entire organization of which it is a part) claims to be doing. How can you have spontaneous, meaningful organization and animation of a community if any and all decisions concerning the whole group have to be approved through formal channels? How can we even realize our own potential for contributing to that group if it exists as a self-contained entity separate from the interests of the very people supposed to make it up? How can you say you really care about "democratic" or "naturalistic" "learning-by-playing" education when you superimpose an arbitrary form over what would be a unique expression of associating individuals? How can you claim to be democratic and progressive when the loudest, most "senior" members are allowed to throw tantrums to get their way? The fact that no one has EVER clarified what happened as a result of the whole wedding fiasco demonstrates that this "community" tolerates values, actions, and methods that are fundamentally anti-community. The means and ends are spoken for--what happens here is just content to flesh it out.

Related to this inappropriate corporate structure is the preoccupation with the "business" side of the school. Of course, it's important to keep the books in order, but the fact that there is so much overhead causes serious problems for this group. Unlike other schools that are part of this "community childcare" organization, we basically accept anyone who applies. This means that the group is just a random assortment of people without any substantial common ground. Another problem is that there is a need to advertize and recruit new people. Our leaving the school means that they will need to find people to take our spot--they will receive less funding and will no longer get money from us every month.

To me, this all amounts to a massive overcomplication of something that is very simple and basic to our very existence: learning. So much energy is wasted on worrying about keeping the boat afloat that no one bothers learning how to swim, so to speak. Apart from the great experiences and interactions we have had at this school, we have mostly been disappointed in how it is structured and operated. But we have learned a lot; one of the major lessons being that "school" is mostly unnecessary. This is why we are working on finding a way to "unschool" our kids in collaboration with other unschooling families. It is a DIY approach that simplifies things in many ways, but also requires a great deal more effort and investment in others. The primary benefit is that you get an optimal effort/effect ratio; that is, you reap what you sow, no more no less. There is no excess "business" to be done. You can enjoy doing fun and interesting things with your kids without having all the risk and responsibility that comes with trying to maintain and operate even a small institution.

Anyway, this is something I will be writing about in a later post. For now, I'll just leave it here. I needed to get this out of my system in order to start writing about the more constructive side of these thoughts, concerns, and interests. We've only been back at this school for two days and we are already tired of the pace of life it entails: our time with our daughter becomes limited to the times before and after school when we are rushing to get ready to go or to eat and go to bed. That sucks. So we are not going tomorrow. Instead, we're going to grandma and grandpa's house for a change of scenery~

Thanks for listening to my rant, kind geminauts~

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