A 6-year-old kid in Guri, Gyeonggi Province, has passed the data processing exam:
A six-year-old boy has passed the test for a data processing certificate after studying for the exam for only two months, the Human Resources Development Service said Monday.
The agency said the boy, identified as Song Yu-kun, successfully passed the qualifying test for information processing technician, which many adults find difficult.
Song reportedly started studying from the end of June by himself with books and his computer at home in Kuri, Kyonggi Province. He passed a written examination after one month of study and completed the final test on Wednesday to become the youngest successful applicant of the test.
Apparently the kid ain’t just a computer wiz, either:
Song is adept not only at computer processing but also in other fields, especially mathematics and science. He was able to calculate differentials and integrals only seven months after he learned multiplication. He completed the sixth grade curriculum in only three months.
He hopes to become a famous physicist like Richard Feynman of the United States.
Yeah, well, didn’t we all want to be like Richard Feynman when we were six?
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23 Comments
woo…sadly, I get to be the first.
This boy? The saddest victim of the Korean Ajumma Ambition Mania.
High levels of credentials. Low levels of real-world improvement.
woo?€?sadly, I get to be the first.
Yeah, and hadn’t even finished the post yet
Anyway, I’m not sure if this kid is a victim of KAAM as much as he’s just, well, a rather special little boy. Unfortunately, his mother was complaining that there weren’t any schools in Korea for kids with the kinds of skills and talents her son has been blessed with. Frankly, I’m not sure of many countries that would.
the qualifying test for information processing technician, which many adults find difficult.
I assume this info. processing technician thingee means ????³´?²?????¸°??? (now you know why I ask for the Korean article link), of which there is the 1?¸‰ and 2?¸‰ (and possibly more). I have the 1?¸‰ (which I don’t really need, but have for reasons that are too long to explain here), and the exam was a joke (at least in ‘98). I actually had to borrow Cobol and Fortran books written in the 1980’s from the library to study that useless crap for the fill-in-the-blanks portion of the test, and went to a ?³???…?³??“±??™??? where the test monitors were real patronizing jerks and I had to take a shit but they didn’t have any tissue dispensers in the bathroom (nor did any of the test monitors have any of their own to spare). Well, I heard it got heavily revamped after that, and now everything is done in C/C++ or anything more modern, with real computers to run your programs on. At any rate, it is quite a feat for a six-year old to obtain this thing. I hope he didn’t have the same problems I did.
I remember reading an article about a study that showed kids who were repeatedly told they were special/geniuses grew up to be depressed because of the pressure.
I grew up around alot of super-pressured asian kids (and other ethnicities: think John Stuart Mill). East Asians for some reason don’t promote love of learning but rather the collection of credentials. For example, “my daughter is in an orchestra” or “my son gets straight A’s in 4rth grade” or “my daughter is going to Yale.” Love of learning is totally absent from these kids and in fact has been replaced with slavish studying. I think this cultural phenomenon comes from the Confucians studying hard to pass the state test in order to enter the super-exclusive bureaucracy - the Saedaebu in Korea.
Look at all the kids in Korea with their youth WASTED in hagwons so they can pass the horrific college entrance exams. Thats child-abuse in my opinion! Once in college, however, its a joke. You don’t even need to show up to pass (or so I’ve heard). This isnt meant to be a racist rant and I’m welcome to corrections on this pet theory of mine.
You don?€™t even need to show up to pass (or so I?€™ve heard).
Ain’t true. Party time indeed for many college students, but it’s not that bad. For one thing, they actually take attendance (WTF?? In college??) in many of the courses, which counts toward your grade, which is why a “?Œ€?¶œ” culture exists. I’ve actually found it the other way around in the U.S., where there is no taking attendance (at least in engineering courses), and you can pull an A from some of the easier classes by showing up only for the exams.
yeah, i’m teaching english “conversation” at a university here and attendance is 20% of the students’ grade. in a language course this is perhaps undestandable, but i think this is standard practice throughout the university.
wooj, “?¿½?¿½?¿½?¿½ culture”? borrowing or lending? i’d be interested to hear what this is about. at first i thought you were referring to books, as students seem to pass their course texts around to each other - but that doesn’t make sense in this context. in fact, any information on the mindset of korean university students would be welcome…
paul
man, i don’t know what’s up with my korean input, but that was supposed to read “?Œ€?¶œ culture”.
“?Œ€?¶œ” = “?Œ€????¶œ???”. Meaning, if you call someone’s name on your attendance list, and someone answers back, it may not be that person but that person’s friend! I’ve seen people answering for three or four friends at a time, and of course there exist strategies for making it sound more authentic (such as by faking your voice and facing a different direction every time so you sound like a different person), and likewise to catch people doing it (counting the people actually present and checking the numbers, doing random visual checks on people who answer back since you can’t do it for all 200 students in big classes, etc.)
Just found here that what he got is a ????³´?²?????¸°?????? certificate, not ????³´?²?????¸°??? (?¸°?????? is a level lower).
wooj - I defer to your experience in Korean Universities.
However, I can talk a little bit about Japan’s Universities to illustrate the quality of another Confucian country’s schools. The Economist did an article last year that said they were garbage and the country’s major companies were highly dissappointed in the quality of graduates. The article pointed towards the “really tough entrance exam and awful standards once youre actually in” problem that I mentioned. One of my best friends studied in Japan for a year and confirmed what I had read. He spent most of the time in a permanently drunken state, putting down the bottle only to fornicate. (sorry Ryuji, you know its true).
I heard similar stories about Korea and thats where I came up with my theory of how Confucians approach education. I don’t know about China, Taiwan, or Vietnam… any one who knows, I’d love to hear.
My experience teaching in Korean universities is that some majors have serious students, but most do not.
Engineering students tend to be serious and assiduous in their studies. So are English Education majors. This is partly because they have especially rigorous certification exams to pass. (There are problems with this motivation, too, but I won’t go into them.)
I’ve found English majors to be generally lackadaisical. Business students usually don’t give a crap. Other majors are also indifferent about learning, for the most part.
But even in the serious majors, I’ve found that students don’t work as hard as at American universities.
One of my acquaintances at Hanshin University, when I was still teaching there, was a Chinese woman in the Chinese Language and Literature Department, and she wrote an article for a Hanshin publication in which she compared Chinese and Korean students and remarked that the former work very hard at their studies but that the latter don’t.
Typically, my students procrastinate and then on the eve of the due date attempt to write an essay assigned since the semester’s beginning. There’s thus no time to proofread. This sort of thing seems to be a larger social problem, characteristic of the work habits of a lot of Koreans. Procrastination and lack of quality control.
Jeffery Hodges
thanks wooj, i’ve definitely experienced ?¿½?¿½?¿½?¿½ culture in my classroom.
as far as the problem with quality of education in korean universities, i think part of the problem can be found in the graduation rates; not sure of the exact figure but somewhere in the 90% + range. basically, if you attend classes for four years, you will graduate.
I’ve spent more than a few years teaching in Korean universities. My experience parallells Hodges for the most part. Here are some more of my observations.
Majors in engineering/applied sciences tend to take their stuff quite seriously, although I’ve noticed this to be true of most ocuntries, not unique to Korea. There’s big money to be made after graduation for a smart engineer.
Everyone else appears to be along for the ride to get the piece of paper at the end of four years.
I’ve seen the “daechul” culture up close and personal. Even failed six students one year for taking exams on behalf of their buds who never showed their faces. three fake testers, and three complete absentees. [The School administration overturned my grades for all six and let them graduate without retaking the course. Even the three who had never once attended or tested.]
Daechul is way more serious than just faking attendance for your friends by answering in a different voice.
I once even had a clique of rich boys and girls bring bottles of soju and dried squid into my class, sit in the back corner of the room and answer roll call with a resounding “Pucku Yu” for about two weeks until they got my midterm grades. My class was required for their major.
I admit my experience might not be typical, but I can’t say that in my time here [10+ years] I’ve ever seen anything in any university on the peninsula that would make me think Korea has an academic culture any better than the local junior college-level back in the states.
Well, I feel self-promoting by referring to my own posts (but trust me, I’m not seeking attention. I like this site, and I just occasionally feel the urge to add something when I can), but I’ve written a few things here on one of the prime reasons behind Korea’s crappy college students, since some people seem to be interested (or directly involved) in this subject.
Wooj — self-promotion, like greed, is good. Feel free to link away. Readers would be better off reading your stuff than my drivel, anyway.
I have to agree with almost everyone on board about the general lack of studying by Korean college kids. As a fact, this is a well known universal truth even in Korea–by virtually all the Korean kids I talked to over there. In fact even the international students from Korea bring a lot of this mentality when they come here to “study english” at NYU or other schools. I think Marmot describes it beautifully on his profile page. Aside from the few engineers, most either drink or protest or both.
Even in the field of engineering, where the students are genuinely interested in learning, the research opportunity given to undergrads is crap. Medical school has the same problems too.
For all the examplary secondary education Korea has, it has serious problems with university level education–and I guess I don’t even have to mention the fact the Korean employers like Samsung or LG routinely favor foreign educated Korean workers. Koreans who’ve done post-doc in Korea are treated more-or-less as 3rd rate.
Agreed, at the ESL dept of my University the Engineering disciplines are appreciated by us Jr. profs…they come in interested to learn, with a good level of English already, and genuine interest in getting better thru the course. English Majors are great too, due to the fanatical competition shown in any English class. Biz majors are ok. Law undergrads know no English whatever. Dance and drama majors are the “special ed” of our university, although through the language barrier of “What’s your name?” being incomprensible to them they seem nice.
We’ve always considered the 20% Attendance grade nonsense, and thankfully last year it was reduced at our insistence in our courses to 6% (we asked for 0%). Do you really want 20% of your doctor’s, or lawyers, or any discipline’s qualifications, coming from just showing up and falling asleep with your head on the desk?
Korea should get rid of attendance grade. It’s a crutch of personal responsibility. I know I am here, but….at home there is a better attitude, which acknowledges a university student as an adult “Show up and learn, or don’t and waste your money and fail. It’s your choice.” Problem #2- our Korean universities extreme discomfort with failing ANYBODY. We foreign ESL teachers corps has gotten a rep for being hardasses (according to the head of the English dept) for repeatedly refusing to pass students failing with 25 or 30 %.
20% Attendance points are one factor in the global mediocrity of Korean universities.
A final question on Korean education:
Why is Yonsei the best (or near the top) of Korean Universities? Does it have anything to do with being founded by foreigners and thus having higher standards than pure Korean institutions?
I know this thread is old but any response would really make my day.
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