Reason #72 Why I Want to Quit This Job

Okay, let's forget the "they don't pay me" part of the equation and just focus on the job itself. My boss, who is generally a pretty nice guy, wants me to write a "debate book". Yeah, a book on debate. I'm not kidding here. He wants an entire book written on debate, authored by me. And imagine it this way: "Duane, a whole week has passed. How come debate book no finish-ee yet?"

Last Wednesday I finally had it and told him there was no way imaginable that I was going to be able to write a debate book for him, especially when I never have any time. He keeps adding classes for me to teach. I'm beyond the max now, and they just added a new "TOEFEL Writing" class for me to start teaching today, keeping me here an hour even longer than I'm normally here. Actually, it's two hours longer than I'm normally here because they creatively took away my usual hour break and put a class in place of that break, figuring I'd probably never notice. When I complained, they stopped speaking English and just nodded a lot, and then printed the schedule just as they planned to do.

I don't think people realize how screwed over I've been in this job since I arrived here. The boss promised me FEWER classes so I could work on "his book". Instead, he added classes, and sure enough, in a few days, after he thinks I've forgotten all about it, he'll want "the book". I'm getting so pissed at this fracking place.

My only real alternative right now is to just cut my losses and leave. I just don't have anywhere to go. I need a job, and I can't find one. I can find hundreds of jobs in South Korea, but I can't take a single one because I'm on a prison visa (at least it feels like it), and for some reason I can't seem to get a single response from any other country. It sometimes feels surreal, but it's happening and so aggravating.

Stumble It!

My first debate in almost a decade

I could have gotten out of it if I wanted. My eyes were having trouble seeing (the medical problem I'm still having right now), so I could have passed on it, but I started thinking that it would look really bad if I found an excuse (even a real one) to get out of it, so I said I would participate in it.

It was between the teachers as the academy here, and it was to be in front of a bunch of Korean mothers who were thinking of enrolling their kids in the academy. The topic chosen was This House would eliminate child labor. The Korean teacher on my side and I were to be the opposition, so we pretty much had to argue that child labor was good, or find some way around it.

The two female Korean teachers were the pro side, and they created a standard child labor is bad, and they were going to use the WTO to abolish child labor in third world areas like Bangladesh. Our defense was pretty standard, except I decided to play a different card in this game, and I created a three pointed defense based on:

Go Your Own Way
Sometimes, the only way to really avoid such a thing as child labor is for the country involved to experience it themselves and then solve it after realizing how it has affected their country. The argument was basically that imposing morality upon another society only reinforces one's own morality, but does not develop morality in the targeted society. However, if these countries go through their own reflection process, like the US and Great Britain did, then they, too, can benefit from their own experiences and create a better future society. I linked the argument to a connective philosophy put forth by Samuel Huntington's The Third Wave, in which countries backlash after achieving successes because they have not yet learned a better way than what they knew before and were only relying on what was taught to them from first world countries.

Good Capitalists Aren't Born
This argument is that child labor is not always wrong. I started with the example of my own life, where I began working at twelve. I reiterated that the government's plan (through poi's) is targeting all workers who are under age. This meant that younger people with stable jobs will also lose their jobs, or those companies and the government will receive backlash from the WTO (the government's plan). I included that child labor keeps children out of crime, as most poor children are subjected to an environment where the forces of crime target them if they are available. Taking away their job makes them available. I also reiterated the idea that child labor is the first training opportunity a young person has to learn the concepts of their society's economic process. I linked Orson Scott Card into this argument with the concept of growing a society's progressive knowledge based on contributions from its youth population.

AIDS Kills All
This was what I figured was my more "Duane" argument here. I argued that third world countries, especially those in Africa are suffering from the AIDS crisis. The regular work force is being devastated by AIDS, which is making it so that there is no left to fill in the occupied workforce. Therefore, the youth of those countries are now being forced to fill in where adults used to exist. There is more and more call for the youth to fill these positions as more and more people succumb to the disease. With the higher educated populations leaving the country in fear and in search of prosperity, to not use the labor force of younger people was both foolish and would lead to eventual destruction, more warlords, and geometric rates of deaths. I linked this to a Carole Pateman argument on the concept of civic education and deterioration of societies based on being unable to fill the gaps of previous generations.

It was a fun debate. Our side seriously overwhelmed the government's side with our case. I used a typical "WTO/UN/World Bank is bad" response case (the kind we never get enough of at Pacific) to most of their main points. I then ran an "Enforcement is mainly illusory" case on their sanctions argument, and the rest of their case fell apart from there.

Yes, it was definitely something I haven't done for a long time. And I got to use my favorite weapons in my arsenal: Passion and pathos (same thing really). It made for a much more lively debate.

Stumble It!