Het klinkt onwaarschijnlijk, maar het kan toch echt: als buitenlander (nota bene als Amerikaan!) lesgeven op een universiteit in Pyongyang:
Last summer, I spent a month teaching academic English skills to North Korean university students at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the country’s first privately funded university. My main reason for going was to learn as much as possible. Of course, I wanted to teach well, and I felt confident I could do that. But I had no idea what I would learn and how this experience would affect me.
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Teachers had been asked not to engage in contentious political discussion, and the students were pretty sensitive about instructors contradicting any of their beliefs, so it was tempting to mentally tune out or just nod my head in agreement when students expressed unbelievable or preposterous ideas. If I hoped the students would stay engaged when I presented new ideas that seemed completely preposterous, I knew I had to listen, ask questions, and stay open to their viewpoint no matter what I thought or felt.
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