From Seoul

At the invitation of my high school, Seoul Foreign School, I'm in South Korea for 11 days. It's been nine years since I was last here, and once again I'm astonished at the changes in the city that was once familiar to me.

Seoul is more urbanized than ever and I'm struck this time by how international it's become. It's not just the frequent glimpses of Western chains - Starbucks, Pizza Hut, McDonald's - but the predominance of Western influences in trendy coffee houses, cosmetic shops and restaurants - chic, upscale, and sophisticated.

In a clean, brightly-lit subway car, the young passengers are in t-shirts and distressed jeans, ballet slipper flats and athletic shoes, tunic tops over leggings, with white cords of Ipods dangling from ears and fingers busily texting on "hand phones." If not for the all-Korean faces in this crowd, I could be in a U.S. city or in many other urban centers the world over.

Globalization is erasing the particularity of Korea. It makes the sightings of truly Korean details - yellow melons and crisp apples sold off the backs of trucks, street vendor stalls with trays of ricecakes or steaming vats of noodles, walls enclosing tiled-roof homes - all the more precious.

Our children are growing up in a world that is ever more connected. Differences of time, custom and tradition are bypassed with internet hookups and instant messaging. But in a global culture defined by the chatter of media and technology in the common language of commercialization, where is true substance to be found?

Our souls still need the poetry and beauty of ancient, particular ways of living.  

Connecting Kids to Their World

For our April six-school tour in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, author Margy Burns Knight and I were presenting on our five nonfiction books about differences. The most recent of these titles, Africa Is Not A Country, was published in 2000, so we wanted to connect the information in our books with current world news. 

We created slide shows of recent events and people related to the content of our books. For instance, showing images from several of the African countries who celebrate their independence holidays in April, we talked about how those were like birthdays for countries. 

Then we showed photographs of Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday in 2007 with its football-themed party and cake, and connected that to South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup. And we shared information about the Elders, a group of world leaders formed that same birthday, in Mandela's words, "to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is a conflict and inspire hope where there is despair.”

With younger classes, we considered welcoming traditions in relation to our book Welcoming Babies. Margy showed three different cloths that begin with the letter K: homespun khadi cloth from India, a colorful kente cloth from Ghana, and a kata from Tibet, often put around someone's neck to welcome them. In response to our questions, students identified the Hawaiian custom of welcoming people with leis. We connected that to Obama's Hawaiian heritage, and, to squeals of excitement and recognition, showed a photograph of the newest resident of the White House, sporting his welcoming lei.

This concerns-based teaching builds a bridge from the personal world of what is familiar to children - birthdays, soccer, new puppies - to the larger world.