4 #2
“Yeah, but they don’t come with the answers. Only people like us can create the answer key. You could probably make one up in a few hours.”
Mido had liked Mr. Shim. He’d come highly recommended, and it surprised her a little that he’d been so willing to cheat, but lately, the pressure on students and hagwon teachers alike had gotten even worse.
It had been easier to work at Exodus with the kindergartners and middle school students.
The working parents had just been happy when the kids were safe and their homework was done before pickup time.
With some of the high school students in Irvine, there were far higher expectations. Tutoring wasn’t enough.
The selective colleges required top scores, beyond-perfect grade point averages, the most demanding classes the respective schools offered, extracurricular activities with leadership positions, letters of recommendation attesting to exceptional qualities, significant publications, nationally important awards, and/or elite and costly sports.
A few months back, Mido had met with a high school junior at Fortress who had started a dot-com business selling flashlights during her freshman year in high school, and a boy who had learned C++ and Java so well that he could work as an independent contractor and skip college altogether.
“I like the kids so much,” Peter said. “Believe it or not, I do want them to get what they want. But I just can’t justify cheating.”
“None of us wants that. If we take a hit, we’ll get over it,” Mido said. “I know you and Lion are right, Peter. In the long run, integrity is what really matters, right?”
The car was parked, yet Peter kept his hands on the steering wheel. He faced her and exhaled.
“How’s Tek?”
“What?”
“The lawyer guy from Australia who thought we were losers for working at a hagwon.”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.” Peter turned the ignition.
“He didn’t think we’re losers. He just wanted me to go back to Sydney.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I like teaching kids, too.”
“That’s all?” Peter looked at her again.
“The pay’s good.”
“I get it.” He never wanted to pry.
“You ever see your father?”
“No,” he said.
Mido didn’t ask any follow-up questions. DH would have asked many more, though he probably knew all the answers.
As soon as the car pulled into Yun and Lion’s place, Ginny ran out to meet them. She hugged Mido.
“Did we beat them here?” Mido asked Ginny, stroking her short brown hair. At sixteen, Ginny was almost as tall as Mido, but her bright face with its rounded features and chubby cheeks resembled a middle schooler’s, not that of a junior in high school.
“Yes. You won,” Ginny said. “Yun Teacher just called. They’re leaving Garden Mart. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I set the table already.”
“Did you eat?” Peter asked.
“I had dinner and finished my homework.”
“Nice job,” he said, smiling. Ginny had become like a baby sister for all four of them.
“Yun Teacher said you’ll help me with my college essays,” Ginny said, looking up at Mido.
“Did she?” Mido raised an eyebrow.
“Won’t you? Are you too busy?” Ginny looked concerned.
“You’re my top priority. But you’re going to have to really work. My students suffer.”
“I’ve heard,” Ginny said, wondering if it could be true that Mido Teacher was called the Surgeon.
“You have to write, write, rewrite and rewrite,” Mido said.
“Yes, and somehow you’ll like it,” Peter said, his arms folded.
“I don’t like writing personal essays,” Ginny said. “I’m a science and math person.”
“You just haven’t had the right teacher,” Peter said.
“The kids say that Mido Teacher will split your skull open and fish around until she finds exactly the right subjects for you, then apparently, she slices open your heart to get all the feelings out. And that’s before you start your rewrites.
I pity you, Ginny. I do. You have to face the Surgeon. ”
“I sound scary.” Mido smiled. “I like it.”
Ginny laughed. “I want to go to Dartmouth now.”
“Why?” Peter asked, remembering the guys he knew from Andover who’d gone there.
They were smart jocks. Of course, Dartmouth had every sort of student, but from Andover, they took the top scholar-athletes.
Ginny couldn’t run down the block or throw a ball.
“New Hampshire is very far. Kinda remote. And cold!”
“Monica Cho goes there.”
Mido didn’t recognize the name.
“Is she a Fortress student?”
“No. She went to my high school, graduated last year. Monica went to another hagwon in Cypress—Ivy Leaf Academy.”
Peter knew of it. It was supposed to be a good one.
“I saw Monica when she came home for Christmas break, and she told me all about Dartmouth. She said I can visit her, and if I get in, she’ll tell me what classes to take and which ones to skip.”
“That’s how you’re going to choose a college?” Peter asked skeptically.
“That’s how most of them seem to choose a college. At least when they’re being honest,” Mido said.
“I have a friend who teaches there,” Peter said.
“A history professor now. He went to King’s, too.
He was several years ahead of me. He got his PhD at Yale.
I ran into him again when he was a TA in a twentieth-century British history survey course.
Smart guy. Published his dissertation on the Reformation, I think. ”
Mido turned, hearing the wheels of Yun’s car crunching across the gravel driveway.
During dinner, Peter brought up Ginny’s rationale for applying to Dartmouth, and neither Yun nor Lion was surprised.
“Have you ever asked them about why they want to go to college, or if they even want to go at all?” Lion picked up another piece of gimbap and popped it into his mouth.
Peter taught math for every standardized test, including grad school exams, and did occasional private tutoring for physics and calculus.
His students were already mid-to-high-level scorers and liked learning math with him.
Most of them tended to get very high scores because he’d teach them how to think like mathematicians.
“Focusing on outcomes doesn’t help you learn,” Peter said.
“Agreed,” Lion said, recalling their earlier conversation that morning about firing Mr. Shim.
“Why is it wrong to think about outcomes?” Yun asked. “I’m not saying I disagree with you—”
“Because then what? What happens after you hit the score? What happens after you get into college? What happens after you get the job? What happens after you meet your goal? Then what?” Peter grew irritated. “I hate that about Koreans. Set the goals. Then set the goals higher. Then higher.”
“All Koreans?” Mido asked.
“Well, not all Koreans. Just my father. Never mind.”
Peter didn’t say “never mind” often. They all knew what it meant.
“Well, how should our kids choose their colleges?” Yun asked.
“We should at least include the question, What is college for?” Peter said, tapping the dining table for emphasis.
“Yeah,” Lion shouted, and raised his fist. “What is college for?”
“Seriously,” Yun said. “You need that degree to get a good job.”
Remembering, she turned to Mido. “Well, you don’t need a degree because you’re special.”
Mido smiled.
“We should take the kids on a tour,” Peter said.
“A lot of these kids never see the campuses. Their folks either can’t or won’t take them.
They should attend classes. They should know more about these schools.
I know we get our students into the fancy schools, but are they doing okay there?
” he asked. “Last year, two of them flunked out for doing drugs. One of them locked himself in his room for days and didn’t come out because he was playing GTA. ”
They’d heard about John Lee, Seth Kim, and William Chang—kids who had never once caused any problems in high school.
“And one of them is still at home now, right? Brown, Wesleyan, and NYU. Top schools,” Peter said.
He remembered Colin, one of Fortress’s brightest students, who had graduated from Caltech.
He’d been admitted to a hospital for severe clinical depression for over a month.
When it happened, Colin’s mother had asked Peter to check in on him because he had gotten along especially well with her son.
He was now a server at his aunt’s coffee bar.
Several students who had graduated with superb records from highly selective schools hadn’t been able to find appropriate work and had become discouraged.
“And then there are the kids who can’t get jobs for college grads despite their degrees.”
“What’s wrong with the world that can’t employ kids like that?” Yun asked.
Lion crossed his arms. “You can’t always get the job you want, right? Several were trying to get jobs in entertainment and media, which is hard for anyone. They had no connections. Eventually they found jobs. Probably not their dream jobs. Isn’t that life?”
Yun picked up her chopsticks and put more gimbap on her husband’s plate. She knew Lion was upset about it. Their graduates often stopped by the hagwons to say hello. Of the ones who had wanted to work in Hollywood, one now worked at a real estate brokerage and another at an accounting firm.
“The gain from our study is to have become better and wiser by it,” Lion quoted Montaigne. His essay “On the Education of Children” was required reading for all employees.
“Maybe we have to teach our students different things about college, not just how to get in but what they should do once they’re there,” Mido said at last. “We can start with the tour.”