Report from Busan, South Korea: The Indigo Humanities Fair
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Wednesday, August 20th, 2008, 8:42 PM
I spent last night’s dinner talking with a 19-year-old Korean who has been attending Indigo’s humanities reading program for a couple of years. For her, like many of the young Koreans I’m meeting here, Indigo is a lifeline: A community where they “get a breath of fresh air,” as one put it, away from the stress and competition of their hectic high school lives.
It’s hard to describe Indigo, and I’m only myself just beginning to comprehend its significance. Indigo is part-bookstore, part-publishing house, part-humanities educational program, part-social movement.
Started 20 years ago by Aram (her name means–”My name means Indigo), the organization runs an after-school program based on an interactive humanities curriculum and recently expanded into a beautifully designed eco-building and an “ecotopia” vegetarian restaurant (inspired by Hope’s Edge!) run by volunteer parents of students in the programs.
Narrow and tall, the organization’s new home was built around a Gingko tree that grows up through its middle and whose leaves you can see through each of the floor’s interior windows. A five minute walk to a mountain within the city limits and to the beach in the other direction, the building catches a breeze that naturally cools it despite the city’s hot summer weather.
I was invited to speak at this year’s book fair because Indigo published the Korean version of Hope’s Edge. Tomorrow, at my talk, every student will have read the book and come to my workshop with questions for me. The student I had dinner with last night will moderate the conversation.
Over kim chee and other delicious Korean food, she and I talked about the significance of Indigo for her. It’s not unusual, she said, for her and the typical student to study at school until 10 or 11 at night, six days a week, often on Sundays, too.
“We don’t get to see our families much,” she says, with a slight downturn of her eyes.
The educational system not only demands these long hours, but also strict obedience to a teaching style that prioritizes memorization above all else.
During our dinner conversation, a visiting American teacher pipes in to explain the contrast between Indigo’s methodology and the typical Korean school: Indigo’s classes are based on rigorous reading, yes, but also on critical thinking and interpretation. Indigo teachers encourage students to think for themselves. In contrast, at the typical school here, students will read literature or poetry alongside sanctioned interpretations, interpretations they then have to memorize; they’re tested on the official version. The teacher tells me about a poet who met with Korean students studying her work. She tried to take the test based on the official interpretation of one of her poems and got half the questions wrong!
Tomorrow, after my talk, I head to Seoul where I’ll be focused on research for my book, meeting with representatives of farmers movements here. With newspapers here still filled with news about the protests against American beef, it will be an interesting time to talk with farmers and consumer advocates about what “food sovereignty” means to them.
Here are pictures from Indigo’s reading room with myself and founder Aram and of the exterior of the Indigo building (my photograph certainly doesn’t do it justice!).
Anna and Aram
Indigo’s Green Building
