Over the summer I had the elementary kids in one of my classes each draw a picture of a famous explorer. Some drew Marco Polo and others drew Indiana Jones, but Danny chose Columbus. Danny is super sharp and about nine years old. In case you have trouble reading his hand writing, here's a transcription of the narrative at the bottom of his picture:
"The first people to discover America are pre-historic Southeast Asians. When Southeast Asians discover America, pre-historic Northeast Asians discover America. They were more older than common people. Later, Columbus discover America, but people don't know Southeast Asians and Northeast Asians, so people think Columbus is the first person to discover America."
Long story short: Koreans discovered America.
A recent essay assignment I gave to some of my middle school kids, in light of the recent U.S. election, was to answer the question "Should Korea ever elect a Black president?" I knew I'd get some interesting responses. Here are several excerpts:
"This year, the USA president Obama was voted. Most countries say that prejudice was gone in USA. He is half black and half American. I agree that the president of Korea should be a person who is half black and half Korean." - Ruby
"...the skin color doesn't affect any problems. For instance, when I went to Canada, there were many students who are black and they had no difference from white students. Some of them were greater than white. And like this, president can be black. They can be red, blue or purple either. Who cares?" - Sophia
"...blacks can have ability that are in whites or the Asiatics. There can be other ability that only blacks have like running ability or muscular strength. If someone has a mind that blacks can't do anything, and they don't have any ability, it's a wrong mind. He or she have to change a mind." - Annabelle
"Nowadays, global society is become reality and the big intestinal wall of race is start to broken down... there'll be much benefit for our country. For example, there'll be more support of other countries that contain many blacks. It's really benefit for our country because that countries has lots of oil and fruits. And risk of terror is decrease also, because people who lead terror like Osama Bin Laden and Tale ban is all black and why they try to terror is, try to get blacks' proper rights." - Issac
"...Korea is not known by other country's people. So if we have a black president, other country should think we are in Africa or we are black... I claim we should not have a black president, because Korea could recognize by others indifferently, also it is a shame..." - Ben
"Four days ago, Barack Hussein Obama -black- was elected president of the United States... if a black have excellent ability and love of our country, what's the matter? That black will improve our country. Now you should take off the unwarranted prejudice about black." - Erica
"We should trash the bad think of Black People." - Alan
"...black race people are clever and brave... Skin color is the difference between the amount of melanic pigment." - David
This last one was by Grace, and as I was at a loss for words (for a variety of reasons), I thought it best to simply post a photo of it, in its entirety:
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