Starbucks Socialist, Seo Eun-mi, also an English professor at Howon University, takes legitimate aim at kindergarten-aged children ordering/drinking coffee while also taking liberal aim at hagwons, consumer capitalism, and beautiful teachers.

So you don’t have to sort through her self-conscious writing:

I was at a coffee shop one Friday morning in Seoul. There I was, with a few other customers drinking coffee and reading books when a beautiful American entered with a group of kindergarten-aged Korean kids. Since the coffee shop was in the Gangnam area of Seoul, these kids seemed to be from some of the more wealthy families who live around the shop itself.

What is the purpose of bringing three- or four-year-old Korean kids to a coffee shop? What kinds of English expressions can they learn from the beautiful American teacher at an American-franchise coffee shop?

I saw them holding expensive drinks as they sat down with their American teacher. I was quite surprised to see three- or four-year-old kids being taught how to order drinks in an expensive coffee shop. All I could say was “Wow, Korea is changing much too fast, and not for the better, I’m afraid.”

Although taking these kids to the coffee shop might have been the result of a conversation plan devised by the American teacher and the hagwon owner, and the parents may have thought it a good idea, I believe it is yet another example of teaching our kids Western capitalist thought more so than simply English education.

Probably a dumb idea to bring kids into a Starbucks for a lesson but then again, it sure beats a day at Avalon English.  

Full op-ed [Korea Times]

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