Learning is essentially reciprocal. That is why we often learn things from our students. Sometimes, students come up with surprisingly fresh ideas and profound insights in and out of the classroom. Other times, they put us to shame by politely but poignantly pointing out our mistakes and misconceptions. Indeed, they often enlighten us and widen our perspectives. For that reason, I truly enjoy my profession as an educator, which has benefited me greatly. Working with my students has always been an inspiration. 

Students, too, learn from their teachers. Since the influence of teachers upon their students is so enormous, the importance of learning from a good teacher cannot be overstressed. Indeed, it is a blessing to have a great teacher who can be your anchor and guiding constellation all through life. A great teacher is someone who can show you the way even in the dark and lead you through the labyrinth of life and learning. If you are lucky, you will meet such an excellent teacher whom you can proudly call your mentor. If not, you will end up with an incompetent, mediocre teacher who, unable to find an exit, will frequently get you lost in the funhouse. If you are extremely unlucky, you will encounter a narrow-minded, self-righteous teacher who will brainwash you with a dangerous ideology and consequently guide you down the wrong path.

If you have a bad mentor, therefore, your life may be ruined. For example, historians agree that if only Hitler had not had such a twisted mentor as Johann Dietrich Eckart, he may not have brought about the Holocaust and massacred 6 million Jews. Eckart was a notorious anti-Semite who exerted a strong influence on Hitler and helped him found the Nazi Party. Eckart believed in the advent of a messianic superman who would free Germany from the evil Treaty of Versailles. To his eyes, Hitler was this messianic superman.

In a recent episode of the popular American TV series “NCIS-LA,” a terrorist assumes a pseudonym and takes on the identity of a college professor. Then he begins brainwashing his innocent students and turns them into potential terrorists. The ill-advised, naive students begin to bear a grudge against their government and manufacture bombs to use for terrorist acts.

In most advanced countries, brainwashing adolescent students with political ideologies in secondary schools is strictly prohibited. In Korea, however, radical teachers are freely exerting a bad influence on their immature young students by brainwashing them with leftist ideology in elementary, middle and high school. It would be very wrong, however, if our young students were nurtured by those ideology-oriented teachers to become parochial jingoists full of hatred against wealth, capitalism and foreign countries in this rapidly globalizing world. A teacher should not make value judgments or push a certain political ideology in the classroom. Unfortunately, some teachers and professors are hopelessly opinionated and conspire to turn our youngsters into political activists, while the rest remain silent. As Edmund Burke said, however, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

As for me, I was lucky enough to have two great mentors while I studied in the States: Leslie A. Fiedler and Edward W. Said. It was professor Fiedler who taught me that studying literature was both an intellectual adventure and a critical responsibility. He frequently told me, “You should bring what you have learned from literature to your life.” Thus I learned from him that there should be consistency between my work as a professor of literature and my personal life. It was also from him that I learned that literary criticism is pleasurable in the sense that it is not only an interpretive activity but also an imaginative and creative work, and an act of total moral engagement, just as fiction or poetry is.

Said, who was my academic adviser at Columbia, taught me the same thing. He used to tell me, “The life of a Palestinian in the States is quite disheartening. In America I am almost invisible and always stereotyped. My literary criticism begins right there, that is, it derives from my awareness of being an exile, an Arab living in a Western country hostile to me.” Nevertheless, Said did not harbor grudges or engage in personal vendettas. Instead, he told me that being an exile did not necessarily mean being sad or deprived and that belonging to two worlds enabled him to understand the two cultures more comprehensively. It was from Said that I learned that literary criticism is not only pleasurable but also painful, in the sense that literature is a part of the social world, human life and the historical moments in which it is situated and interpreted.

Living in this ideologically divided country called Korea, I often wish we could have great, open-minded teachers who could thunderously say “No!” and lead our students in the right direction. I often lament, “Where have all the great mentors gone?” 

By Kim Seong-kon 

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.