Do You Know the Muffin Man?

Working in an English language school in which the curriculum and lesson plans are neatly and rigidly laid out for teachers has its ups and downs. The major advantage is that it minimizes my preparation time for class to under 30 minutes a day. The major disadvantage is that I often disagree with the lesson plans, which focus more on memorization than on comprehension, and which stifle my creativity almost entirely. On an average day, I don't really feel like a teacher. I feel like an automaton. An English-speaking automaton with the ability to saunter through the day on autopilot, thoughtlessly correcting grammar and requesting that students cease speaking in their native tongue. My job is not particularly taxing, but it can be quite boring at times. Case in point: I wrote roughly 27% of this blog post during my first four classes of the day. It can often take a powerful catalyst to lift me out of my self-inflicted bout of lethargy. And today, that catalyst came in the form of a melody.

Having just successfully taught the extremely basic concept of "like," "love," and "hate," to students of a lower than average English proficiency, I was now content to listlessly walk around the classroom in a trance, my eyes scanning the pages of the students' workbooks to ensure that they indeed understood the simple concept that they learned long before today, while my brain was slowly retreating into my fantasy world. It wasn't long before my attention was roused by a brighter than average student who began singing, "Finish-ee, Finish-ee" upon the completion of his workbook activities. The lyrics of this song were unsurprising, as many Korean students tend to proudly and habitually celebrate the accomplishment of their brisk translation skills with a "finish-ee" jingle of their choice, but it was the tune rather than the lyrics of this song that successfully jolted me from my catatonia. It took a few runs through the chorus before I could place it, but before long I was teleported back to my living room in Mobridge, watching my nephews and niece running towards their Grandpa's leg, requesting an encore performance of a "ride" known to them only as "Pony Boy."

For those of you unfamiliar with the short tune, "Pony Boy," I'm sure you aren't alone. To the best of my knowledge, "Pony Boy" is not an especially popular song in modern times. However, this isn't the first time that a student has spontaneously begun singing a seemingly obscure children's song that happens to be extremely relevant to my former life. One of my students with undiagnosed ADHD routinely relieves his burning need to speak by screaming the lyrics of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" Every time he breaks into the chorus of this song, I experience an almost painful nostalgia to be sitting in my eerily silent home in Mobridge when my mother suddenly bursts into an excessively sonorous version of this same tune for the exclusive purpose of causing me to wet my pants. While this may seem like a strange memory to feel nostalgic for, especially considering the ear damage it causes to my cochlea, it is nevertheless an integral part of what it means to be a resident at the Deacon home.

Although Seon Woo, my muffin man student, can sing the song with almost perfect enunciation, I am convinced that he doesn't, in fact, know the Muffin Man, nor does he know where to locate Drury Lane. Nevertheless, while I am fairly certain that his comprehension of the song differs from my own, and his personal experience with the song most definitely differs from my own, I still find it perplexing to conceive that a 10-year-old Korean boy in 2010 regularly sings the same children's song in English that a 10-year-old American girl used to sing in 1995. I don't know what I expected Korean children to be like prior to coming to Korea. I've been here for too long now to recall all of my initial preconceptions. But what I do know is that I didn't expect my childhood self to have much in common with a modern day Korean child. As is usually the case, my assumptions, however seemingly logical in this instance, have proven to once again be inaccurate. I will concede, of course, that there are plenty of differences between 1990s American children from the Midwest and present-day Korean children from Daegu. I never ate kimchi and rice for breakfast. I never began learning a foreign language at the age of four. I played with my dog after dinner rather than ate my dog for dinner. But while the specific experiences of Korean children may be different than those of American children, their personalities are strikingly similar. Throughout the world, girls and boys of a certain age are convinced that the opposite sex has coodies. While the pop stars of various countries may differ, students everywhere are obsessed with catchy pop music sung by disposable androids. While the content of tests may differ, kids still get stressed out over exams. Although the amount of free time kids have may differ, students still spend most of it playing computer and video games. While they may follow different sports, they still have excessive admiration for sports celebrities. While some things in their respective societies are more humorous than others, poop jokes are funny…always.

My intention when I started this post was to briefly and casually mention that a student began singing "Pony Boy" today in class and it made me deliriously happy. Naturally, I failed at the basic task I set out to accomplish. I had no idea it was going to spawn into a reflection about children of the world. Having now gone too far to turn around, I feel as though I need to wrap up with a profound and enlightening concluding statement. But instead, I'm going to leave you with a cliché that I only partially believe: Kids are the same wherever you go.