hangman

Let's get this out of the way early: Hangman is the worst. I remember not even liking it when I was a kid. For one thing, it's practically impossible to lose a game of hangman. And, even if you did, who gives a shit? It's vastly inferior to other classroom games, Seven-Up, for example. Remember Seven-Up? Now that's a game.



Teaching in Korea has made my disdain for Hangman grow exponentially. First, it's an absolutely useless method of educating. Kids don't learn a thing from it. Yet, as much as I hate it, I find myself coming back to it time and time again. Imagine this: You've just about wrapped everything up - the work is finished, everyone's got their homework written down, we're just about squared away, but there's 5 minutes left in class. This is a horrifying situation to be in. I know it doesn't seem like it should be, it seems like one could just say hey kids we finished a little early today just play it cool for a bit and we'll get out of here, alright?. That kind of rationality doesn't fly with a class of Korean elementary school students. Within 30 seconds the room will be a cacophonous madhouse. You have to give them something to do. It's in these panicked moments that Hangman disguises itself as a godsend. The kids, who love it for some reason, are begging for it, so you ignore the voice in the back of your head screaming at you are you mad, not again! and you convince yourself it'll work this time, that there will be no problems. 

There's one problem right off the bat with playing Hangman. It requires one child to be chosen above the rest, to be the one to chose a phrase, write the letters, draw the hangman, and so on. I've had Hangman games die on the vine at this point. Another problem is that it requires an order, a sequence of turns. Korean kids don't go for this either. No matter how clearly and directly you explain that Soo-Eun goes first and after her Ju-Hee, okay? as soon as the first kid has had their turn, the rest of the class will start shouting out letters.

A classroom full of kids shouting out letters haphazardly isn't even the worst possible scenario, either.  Kids will just shout out full words. If the word has 5 letters, they'll shout every 5 letter word they can think of. If the word has 6 letters, likewise. If it's two words or more of any length, they're yelling out God knows what. Often times the kid who chose the word(s) did so by finding it in their storybook, which leads to everyone else in the class flipping through their own book looking for words that match and shouting out any that they find. Inevitably somebody says the answer and the game is ruined/won.

Sometimes, if the fates allow, there's a class of kids who understand the rules. They're willing to take turns guessing, and they know to only guess letters, but there's still one last obstacle. Now, maybe this is where I go wrong, but I try to use Wheel of Fortune rules, meaning after a kid guesses a letter he/she gets 5 seconds or so to guess the word. But if a kid knows the answer and it's not his/her turn, there's no way in hell he/she is playing it cool. They say the answer, which leads to the kid whose turn it was feeling cheated, and now that they know the answer they feel it's their right to give the answer, but then the other kids aren't going for that and a riot breaks out.

I feel like there's an allusion I could make to some piece of literature, or a fable or something, the moral of which is you keep coming back to this thing thinking it will be different this time. I'm drawing a blank though, and it's late and I'm tired. Just, Hangman sucks.