by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The case could be made that with the rise of A.I., the ESL teaching economy in Asia is about to undergo a severe retrenchment. It could be that as A.I. gets better and better at real-time translation, the idea of actually learning English will become quaint in the eyes of South Korean parents who are already often strapped for education cash.
But, I don’t know.
It may not be as simple as that. There is a lot to be said for the simple cultural exchange that takes place when young Korean children — and Korean society as a whole — are exposed to people from outside the country.
So it’s possible that there will be a lot of hand wringing, but, in the end, nothing much will change. Maybe a lot of the poorer school districts, outside of the major cities in South Korea, will give up on ESL, but in big cities nothing will really change that much.
I feel like trying to write a column about this for The Korea Times.
