Afraid that I Might Actually Become a Good Person

Now, everyone has their failings. In some people's eyes, my atheist (or rather, I-Could-Give-A-Damn-Less-est) attitude immediately puts me into categories shared by things like famine, disease, or the elderly -- an evil that must be prayed away.
In my own eyes, I tend to be arrogant, shallow, and on the best of days only mildly vengeful. Nothing I'm ashamed about, of course, since that would negate the arrogance factor. I like to joke, usually before I say something terrible, inappropriate, and hillarious, that "This is for the swimming pool," or sofa, or wide screen TV on the 99th level of Hell that they are currently building for me at this very moment. That being said, I should avoid doing anything that might be misconstrued as good, noble, or selfless.

In all seriousness, though, while researching topics for my free speaking class, I came across an article in National Geographic about North Korean refugees and their struggle to escape and get to the South. One girl in particular that I read about said that when she got to Seoul, she'd like to study English.

The author did some great work, and he followed up with the three refugees the article entailed a few months after their odyssey ended and they arrived in the South. The aforementioned girl ended up not being able to take English courses just because they were too expensive. The unfortunate truth is that North Koreans who do escape face a new kind of prison caused by a simple lack of education. Here in the South, students go to public school, and then private academies from morning to night. North Koreans simply don't have the opportunity to do that, so when most get here, they find themselves "stuck".

This, to me, is unacceptable. My education philosophy is that just like a doctor's responsibility is to help anyone that he or she sees hurt, a teacher's job is to teach anyone who would learn. I contacted the organization mentioned in the article that works to smuggle North Koreans through China and several other countries, and offered to teach a few classes every weekend for their wards. At this point, with my busy job and lifestyle, I can't do much more than that but simply accepting others' hardships when they are right in front of me is something that I can't do either.

My ultimate dream (other than world domination) is to create a series of schools across the world that specialize in free adult education. The schools will have only two requirements: that you come only if you want to learn, and that you use the knowledge you earn to improve the world. In the beginning, these schools will specialize in English, but then I want to open them up to include other topics like math, science, even the arts. There is no excuse that in this age of technology that higher education is only accessible to 2% (the rough percent of Bachelor's degree holders) of the world; it is, I would argue, humanity's greatest failing of the 20th century.

I had planned to realize this dream in the future, perhaps in my 30's, but there is no reason the first steps cannot be taken now, today, to provide a firmer foundation for later.

Last year I saw many protests about North Korea staged by Americans and Canadians dressed like hippies, marching through the streets of Insadong in central Seoul. To me, they looked like directionless fools, preaching to a crowd that sees the North not as rivals, but as brothers and sisters, and despite their weapons and threats, of zero danger to themselves or to their families.

I'm sure with the North's latest ramblings, the protests will kick up once again. When they do, I will try to recruit some of the protesters to work with me towards a realistic goal, rather than scream at the wind and hope it changes direction.

We'll see, though. I taught my first class on Saturday, and it went well. I will blog about the details of it later.