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Showing posts from June, 2014

Korea's "Justice Trap" (Korea Times, June 18, 2014)

Korea's 'justice trap' Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel was so popular during his trip to Korea in 2012 that I'm surprised he didn't apply for Korean citizenship before he departed. By Casey Lartigue, Jr.  He threw out the first pitch at a baseball game, pow-wowed with Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and spoke to an overflow crowd of 15,000 at Yonsei University's open-air theater. Oh, and he had already reportedly sold more than 1 million copies of his book "Justice: What's the Right Thing to do?" in Korea in the lead-up to the trip. Why was his book on philosophy so popular? My main guess: He tapped into what Professor David R. Henderson calls the "justice trap." An associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., Henderson recently wrote, "Years ago, I came to the conclusion that seeking justice is usually not worthwhile no matter how

2014-06-04 Yeonmi even works on holidays

In Yeonmi Park's book "In Order to Live," she thanked me for believing in her from the very beginning. I think this meeting on June 4, 2014, is an example. Yeonmi and I met with the organizers of a TEDx event in Seoul. I had reached out to every TEDx organizer--only two responded. One said they couldn't fit the North Korean topic into their event. The other one responded that they were very interested, but not sure. They didn't want anything political. So I told them what I was telling everyone during 2014: Just meet her. Finally, they agreed. It was election day, so it was a holiday. After 10 minutes of them talking, one of the ladies said, "Wow! This is definitely a TED Talk!!!" They had gone from doubting she would be a speaker to thanking me for being persistent about meeting with them. It wasn't going to be the big TED stage, but it would be a chance for Yeonmi to give a TEDx speech, in preparation for giving a TED talk later (which she did). At

`Think About It" (Korea Times, June 3, 2014)

Think About It" (Korea Times, June 3, 2014) Casey Lartigue 트위터   페이스북   미투데이 By Casey Lartigue, Jr.  I recently received an email inviting me to contribute to a special issue of the Journal of School Choice in honor of one of my former mentors. I had read his writing for years before I met him for the first time. I was speaking at an event in Washington, D.C. in 2002 when an elderly  man approached me. It was Myron Lieberman. He was already in his 80s. He made it clear that I was making logical points but he also strongly criticized me. I now regret I never told him that I was using his articles and books as talking points back when I was a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. At another speech, I referenced Mr. Lieberman, but he later gently took my argument apart. He was holding onto me as he was gently berating me. He would always compliment me, figuratively feeding me medicine wrapped in candy, before also reminding me that I co

2014-06-01 Mulmangcho: So what do you do here, Casey?

 * We had seven volunteers hailing from six different countries join today. Michael Patterson (Canada), Paul Jennings (New Zealand), Rachel Lewis (UK), Alexiana EL CF (France), Maynard Villamer (Phillippines), Victoria Oh (USA  and Casey Lartigue (USA). * As a reminder, the volunteers not only hail from different parts of the world, but also different parts of Korea. Most are from Seoul, but I heard a few talk about coming from 2 hours away from down south. And the ones in Seoul, we take an express bus that takes 65 minutes, then the school bus that takes another 10 minutes or so.  * It happened again 1: A somewhat new volunteer questioned the school curriculum, suggesting it should be more rigorous. I agreed with her, as I always agree with new volunteers who have suggestions that they suggest that "somebody" should do something about. But something strange happened on the way to the always elusive "somebody" being assigned the task. She pledged to do something ab