If you, unlike me, actually have an opinion about the fight over Yongsan Foreign School, my comments are open.
See also Mike Breen’s column on the Yongsan Foreign School controversy for a primer on the battle.
DISCUSSION: Euro-American War over Yongsan Foreign School
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on June 30, 2006 at 8:59 am, filed under Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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88 Comments
This attempt to portray the fiasco of the Yongsan Int’l School as involving a conflict between Americans and Europeans is a classic case of attempting to divert attention from the real issue. That concerns the typical bait and switch negotiating tactics deployed by the Korean side in pursuit of their goal of gaining effective control of the financial, curriclular, admissions and personnel policies of the school. That AMCHAM continues to participate on the Yongsan FSchool Foundation board is just the latest example of the finlandization of the organization that took place during the tenure of the Fat Man.
This is also classic, from Mr. Breen’s column: “Another side argument I’ve heard coming out of the Foundation, is that as the government is putting up the money, the pesky foreigners have no right to complain. Agreed, it may seem rather, er, North Korean for recipients of hand-outs to be anything but passively grateful. But that’s not what’s happening here. The Foundation should be embracing foreign opinion.”
Even when the project if for the waegookin, the Korean gov’t has to bung it up by imposing what it (almost always erroneously) thinks foreigners should accept.
This is where the ridiculous Korean romanization system and “Hi Seoul” came from, and more recently this fiasco:
ARCO COMMISSIONER RESIGNS IN PROTEST
Sunjung Kim, the commissioner for Korea’s participation as guest country at ARCO 2007, scheduled for next February, has resigned her post in protest of what she calls “bureaucratic intrusion into curatorial affairs, political manipulation of the artistic programs and outright hostility” from Korean officials responsible for funding and administrative support for the project. Kim, 40, was commissioner of the Korean pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and had developed an extensive series of exhibitions and activities for Madrid, including a memorial exhibition to Nam June Paik at the Fundación Telefonica organized by former museum director David A. Ross. Now, Ross has resigned as well in support of his colleague.
The behavior of her liaisons in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism — Lim Byung-dae and the recently appointed arts head, Lee Hyung-ho — “grew increasingly bizarre, verging on the Kafkaesque,” according to Kim. The ministry’s meddling in Kim’s artistic program came to a head with its insistence on the inclusion of Korea Fantasy, a 40-member theater troupe that “prominently features the phony traditionalism of the ‘fan dance’, whose origins are in Las Vegas-style stage shows invented by the military dictatorship in Korea in the 1960s as entertainment for foreign tourists.” As it happens, Korea Fantasy was developed by Korea’s new culture minister.
Kim is the daughter of the Daewoo founder, and I hope people don’t believe Korea Fantasy originated 5,000 years ago, unless they mean Andre Kim’s version, which could be that old
How much foreign money is coming in from Europe anyway?
Process may not have been fair, but, European Influnece would have been even more distastrous.
How many Marxist and Anti-American courses can one really stomach?
Mike Breen is my friend, but as an Englishman with a kid at the British School I wonder about his bias. Certainly I am biased, too, because I’m a very satisfied parent of two children at the International Christian School and excited about the move.
These complainers know nothing about International Christian School other than it has the word “Christian” in its name and its teachers believe in Jesus. Unfortunately, that’s enough for some people to pooh-pooh the school.
Ultimately, if the Foundation wanted a quality school in the fabulous new facilities it had to select an experienced operator. With the British School out, of course ICS had the inside track.
The reason ICS had an “inside track” on being favorably evaluated can be explained by nothing other than the fact that ICS currently operates a terrific K-12 curriculum serving 550 students right here in Seoul. The other bidders, invited to submit applications after discussions fell apart with the British School, probably did not have had the same strength of curriculum to offer.
For example, the Early Childhood Learning Center — the kindergarten of which my daughter attended before going to ICS for the first grade — was one of the competitors. But ECLC is a “pre-K” day-care and kindergarten only. They don’t have any experience operating even a full primary school curriculum. Plus ECLC is a Montessori school; which in the Korean concept of education is not a school at all.
The other potential bidders (I don’t know who actually bid, just that there were some who were really hot to get their hands on the property) included the Indianhead School from Uijongbu, and the Korea International School which I think is in Pangyo. Both of these schools are at an earlier stage of their development than ICS, and may not have been judged credible as a high-school.
Also, one of the objectives of the Foundation is to fill 1000 places in that school this fall, or as soon as possible thereafter. ICS just happens to have its current (crappy) facility’s lease expiring in the fall — they can move right now and bring their full K-12 program. Anyone else proposing to establish an all-new international school (especially anyone proposing to come in from outside Korea) would not be able to do so by mid-August. You can’t hire and house all those teachers and administrators, and recruit the hundreds of students, in the time frame left to the Foundation.
Korea International School looks pretty swell, by the way, from looking at its website, and already has splendid facilities. ICS was crammed into a really crappy old Huam-dong (behind Camp Coiner) building with no playgrounds, no gym, and not much of an auditorium. Maybe, just maybe, the Foundation considered that allowing ICS to rent the Yongsan facilities would result in a net improvement in the overall educational environment.
ICS also happens to cost less than all the other schools. Something about it being their calling to teach…
On the topic of costs, here’s the current annual tuition for a high school student at each place. As one can see, they’re really astonishing.
Seoul Foreign School: W16,500,000 + US$6600 = W22,755,000 per year (plus, new students pay a non-refundable capital fee of W2,000,000, for a first-year cost to a newly-arrived family of W24,755,000)
Korea International School: W16,615,000 + US$6200 = W22,492,000 per year (plus that new student capital fee of US$2500 for a first-year cost of W24,862,000)
British International School Seoul (their plan, before discussions failed): W14,175,000 + US$6075 = W19,935,000, a bargain! (but wait, here’s the new student capital fee of US$5000, for a first-year cost of W24,675,000)
International Christian School: W12,276,000 + US$1400 = W13,604,000 (the capital fee at ICS is an annual W500,000 so I added it into the base tuition)
Thanks for your informed posts, Brendan. Given the Korean media’s credibility problem, it’s hard to take their reporting at face value, so conspiracy theories like Sperwer’s are understandable.
Expatriates have different educational needs. Someone who is in Korea for just a few years needs an English-medium school, and teachers and others on modest salaries simply cannot afford the high tuition of SFS, nevermind the long waiting list. SFS doesn’t accept children with special needs, either.
An American friend with two biracial children returned to the US because of her children’s education. Her son was acting out at school in response to bullying by his Korean classmates, and she couldn’t afford any of the expatriate schools.
… and the Fat Gob Of Womanhood who’s just as guilty.
Originally, I was willing to pay the extra W10,000,000 a year for the “best” school (the facilities are really something else), but SFS treated my family badly at the kindergarten-entry stage and I like to nurse a grudge. My biracial daughter, like a lot of kids here, had just a passive comprehension of spoken English at age 4; SFS rejected her entry after two years on their waiting list, telling me “this is a challenging school, Mr. Carr” and that a little kid who obviously understands English but cannot produce any doesn’t measure up to their high standards. Not enough English for scissors and paste! SFS’s supposed ability to buck up my kid’s English is the reason I would have paid them the W22,000,000!
Then, after we enrolled her at ECLC, they called a month into the school year when the ECLC tuition becomes non-refundable, and invited us off their waiting list. Sure, I have W13,000,000 to throw away. W35,000,000 for the first year of kindergarten? Why not? It’s a challenging school. Bravo your life.
Korea is experimenting with freeing the schools, by allowing private groups to re-use abandoned public school facilities — the population of school-age kids is falling rapidly and there are a lot of un-used schools even in Seoul. The plan is to allow these so-called “charter schools” access to the un-used facilities and give them the same public funding as public schools.
Korean public school is free through sixth grade. After that they charge tuition, which thanks to the partial public subsidy is pretty reasonable at W200,000-W350,000 per month.
Building a super-grade paradise (W135 billion!) for rich kids on the public dime is fine, but every resident of Seoul — including the average-earning foreign residents which include North American English teachers as well as Bangladeshi factory workers — already pays taxes to the public-education system and as Sonagi notes, cultural factors make the local schools unsuitable for mixed kids. This means they don’t get much bang for their tax buck.
There just happens to be an unused middle school directly behind Camp Coiner. ICS tried unsuccessfuly for years to get the powers-that-be to discuss leasing that empty school building to ICS. But maybe the time is right for some foreigners’ group to make another approach. Refurbishing and upgrading (plant some grass in the yard instead of just having dust blow around!) existing, unused facilities seems to offer a more affordable way to expand educational opportunities for all foreign residents of Seoul.
Mr Carr,
You do realize that the stuff you put here deserves its own post, don’t you?
Thanks for the information, Brendon. I, for one, am glad the British School proposal crashed and burned.
As a person who makes only slightly more than the average Korean family income, I would find it impossible to afford tuition for even just one kid at all of the schools you mentioned except ICS (and I couldn’t afford tuition for two).
And as a taxpayer and homeowner here, I am disturbed by the Seoul government’s attitude that, “Well, we’ve got the British School in there, so the problem of educating foreign kids is solved.” Seoul government money is subsidizing an out-of-reach educational opportunity geared toward the very rich. How about working on affordable education for foreign kids, especially since there really aren’t any appropriate facilities for new students who come along who can’t speak Korean?
With a little innovation and use of some of the abandoned facilities (Sudo Girls’ High School in Huam-dong?), a good-quality school that edumacates native English speakers, native Japanese speakers, etc., and promising Korean students who excel at one of those languages, could be done for a fraction of even the ICS cost.
At some point, when I do have kids, I’m going to use my company’s visa-granting status to hire an accredited teacher to come here to Korea, pay him or her a good salary and provide accommodations, and have him/her “home school” my kids and a bunch of “lower-income” parents (e.g., E-2 hagwon/university teachers, F-4 holders who don’t make CEO salaries, etc.) for a down-to-earth tuition fee. That’s the plan, and I’ve got a few people on board with me already. Just gotta make those kids.
Oh, and speaking of grudges, a family friend (naturalized US citizen from Orange County) couldn’t get her US-born daughter into SFS because, although this chatty five-year-old girl is quite adept and talkative in English (it is her dominant language), SFS determined in fifteen minutes she would be an ESL student there, so she was given low priority.
The theory on government providing a new facility for foreign-investors’ kids is that the lack of “first-class” education facilities for their children holds back foreign investment. It makes it more difficult for multinationals to convince the “best” managers to come here. As a lawyer who advises investors, I haven’t noticed this is all that much a problem, but maybe nobody is asking me about it (my main practice area is employment, but still possible).
But, given that foreign investment accounts for 20% of all employment and most of the growth, there is a presumed multiplier effect at work. It makes sense to expand the capacity of elite schools like SFS, the British School, KIS, and now ICS — so that more multinationals can invest in Korea and have their mid-career managers come to Korea with a little more comfort that their kids won’t be hopelessly ill-served educationally.
Still, another school here in Neptune whose annual tuition is greater than the per-capita gross national product of Korea is not going to solve all the educational needs of the community. As you note, there are “expats” here whose incomes are more modest. I am blessed to be able to afford the international schools, but to be frank, it sure would be nice to pay less — especially since it all comes out of my after-tax pocket.
I’ve got the Ministry of Education materials on the charter-schools proposal, and have read them. Now I needs some well-spoken people (my spoken Korean is okay but hardly fluent) to come with me to MoE to talk about setting up a foreigners’ charter school. Got my eye on that Sudo Girls’ High School because the location is fantastic for the foreigners’ community, although I think it ought to be K-12 like ICS.
And I’m NOT gonna name the school the “JEFFREY D. JONES International School”.
Just had an idea: This is exactly the kind of thing Mr. Hines Ward could contribute to the mixed-race children of Korea — Hines Ward School of Huam-dong. Anybody got his number?
Well said, Brendon (and yeah, I think it’s something Hines Ward would get behind).
I don’t mind the government setting up a showcase school in order to attract foreign investors. What I mind is when they think that the problem of educating non-Korean-speaking kids ends there.
Dear Mr. Carr, I respect your opinion however, I have to take you to task on this issue. The problem with this high priced hagwahn is too many ESL students. The reason your school is less expensive is because it is of lower quality. I have no problem with religion in school until it discriminates against other faiths. This is the prime reason I keep my kids in the British side of SFS. I am a Yank through and through but I recognize quality when I see it. This decision is corrupt as it comes. Sit back and watch the Chebol kids populate the seats. Cheers and long live the Marmot!
The concern over the “Christian” part of International Christian School is this: The desirable schools in Seoul (SFS + the British School), as well as the “undesirable” ICS, are Christian. Some people are Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or even atheist. So they might not be comfortable having Jesus waved in their kids’ face every day. The expat business community therefore believes the Korean government owes them a secular alternative as spacious and grand as those at SFS.
Those schools already exist, by the way. They’re called Seoul International School and Korea International School. Both these schools are located on leafy green, spacious campuses, and are secular in orientation. They cost just as much as SFS. SIS, I believe, is at capacity, but KIS has a lot of capacity. Angry atheist parents, check out KIS.
The problem is, they are located outside the general areas populated by foreign business families, and their students are all icky natives. SIS, located down by Seongnam, admits that 95% of its students are ethnically Korean — kids whose parents are Korean-American returnees, or kids whose wealthy Korean parents connived to have them born on U.S. soil in order to avoid military service (something tells me this is the majority). KIS has just moved to a nice campus in Pangyo. These are far, far away from the tony foreign-investor enclaves of Sungbuk-dong, Pyeongchang-dong, and Hannam-dong.
So when the expat investors bleat about not having a secular alternative, what they really mean is “There is not a secular school in my neighborhood, I won’t put my kid on the bus, and I won’t move down south to be closer to the other schools.” There is also a subtle racism issue. The coded message on SIS and KIS among the expat business community is that there are too many Korean faces there — they whisper “the language in the hallways is not English”. (To be honest, I have concern about that too. Ninety-five percent ethnic Koreans portends a similar environment of bullying for mixed kids like mine.)
So to restate, the expat business community believes the Korean government owes them a secular alternative as spacious and grand as those at SFS, in a neighborhood centrally located near their W10,000,000-a-month company-furnished housing, at taxpayer expense, and without so many ethnic-Korean kids enrolled to stink the place up. Pardon me if I think there is a need for the Chambers of Commerce to have a big steaming cup of STFU.
Back to the issue of secular education: ICS does require my children to memorize Bible verses. But to be frank, in the elementary grades, at least, there is much more an emphasis on harmless fuzzy ecumenical messages like “God Loves You”, “God Forgives You”, and “God Protects You.” They haven’t heard the dinosaurs are bunk. And so far there has been no snake-handling. It really doesn’t bother me — regardless of whether one is a believer, the Bible is the greatest work of literature in the history of the world and the foundation of all Western civilization. Kids ought to know what’s in it. Some might argue that it’s still a bunch of bunk and Jesus was a con-man. Well, the public schools tell kids a bunch of lies too: Columbus “discovered” the New World in 1492. The Civil War was about slavery. The environment is all used up. Capitalism is bad. Drugs are bad! Sex is bad! John Kerry would be a good president. If your kids are so stupid they cannot overcome school indoctrination, it’s not the school’s fault — you’re a crappy parent.
Since this thread may later be discovered by people looking for information on foreign schools in Korea, I’d like to leave this note: ICS operates two other schools in Korea, one in Pyeongtaek and one in Uijongbu. As you might expect, these schools predominately serve military-affiliated children (kids of contractors, kids of soldiers without command sponsorship). The tuition is much lower at these two other ICS schools — ICS-Uijongbu is just W7,375,500 per year for high school (which tells you how much of ICS-Seoul’s higher cost goes to pay rent), and ICS-Pyongtaek W7,290,000. If these schools were “charterized” by being given access to abandoned Korean school facilities, and also received the partial public tax subsidy that a Korean school would get, the out-of-pocket tuition cost to parents probably could be as low as W350,000 per month.
Brendon’s screed notwithstanding, my impression is that few if any of the people who are upset at the Koreans’ divestiture of BIS @ Yongsan in favor of ICS have any views whatsoever regarding the effect - one way or the other - of ICS’ Christian orientation and the quality of instruction it provides. Their concerns are three fold. First, they strongly prefer a non-religious educational environment for their children. Second, they also prefer a European style of curriculum and tuition. Third, they also desire that the school environment is one in which their cultural values are upheld and propogated, in fulfillment of which they nevetheless are willing to make one important sacrifice regarding the prevailing language in and outside the classroom in favor of the contemporary lingua “franca” - English.
All of these are perfectly legitimate preferences and the first two don’t necessarily entail either the sort of anti-religious and/or anti-American animus that Brendon and others want to impute to them. Looking at the issue through those glasses is just what the Koreans who effectivley control the Foundation desire the foreigners to do because it will leave then squabbling among themselves instead of focusing on the real problem here. That, as I said at the outset, is the unwillingess of the Korean side to cede effective control over curricular, personnel and admissions policies to the foreign community. Divide and conquer…
Others have raised the equally legitimate issue of the perceived unfairness of ROKGOV subsidies for a school that will, notwithstanding such financial support, cater to the rich.
But consider this. If as Brendon says, the goal of the Yongsan School Foundation is to enroll 1000 students this fall, I predict that the overwhelming majority (way in excess of the still minority % at SFS) most of the students will be Koreans and, consequently, that the education obtained will be sort of a halfway house between a Korean and a western one. Given the nature of the Foundation, preference will be given to children of very well-to-do Koreans and those upon whom they decide to exercise their powers of patronage. What the Yongsan school will become in very short order is a bastion of Korean privilege — where the offspring of the elite can obtain a pretty good simulacrum of a western style education, in the formal sense, masquerading under the banner of foreign education, but where the spirit and feel of the education will not be “western” in any discernable sense. Beside failing to provide even what is desired by rich Westerners, the school and the impulse behind it will also become a lightning rod for Korean popular dissatisfaction that is susceptible of being manipulated into seeing the problem as one of “Westernization” rather than a species of purely domestic inequity resulting from the hijacking of the school by local Korean elites. Granted that, as Kushibio, ROKGOV also should be addressing the needs of foreigners who can’t cover the tuitions of SFS, or even ICS, what chance do you think there is of that ever happening when even the privileged Western corporate types haven’t managed to get ROKGOV to do the right thing?
I also respect Brendon’s opinion on this issue, and would like to thank him especially for the points raised in #13 above. Without question or doubt, the current choices for quality education here are expensive, and thus out of the reach of many school-age children who could benefit, yet ironically the need has not been filled even at this rich level.
As well, I completely agree with railwaycharm’s assertions regarding the influx of rich Koreans. If one doubts the difficulty faced by expat families seeking to educate their school-age children at these schools, then one should simply ask around. As Brendon himself mentioned, children are waitlisted, yet this is hardly a satisfactory situation for parents here on a few-years’ long tour of duty for their company.
Further, once enrolled, expat students may find that classes plod along while teachers attempt to bring Korean students up to speed on the lessons. In actuality, the environment for many of these Korean students is EFL (English as a Foreign Language) rather than ESL (English as a Second Language). This has huge practical implications, since – as is somertimes noted in other threads – local Korean students’ linguistic abilities can differ significantly from EFL students coming here from other countries; yet, as they are not expats themselves (and have myriad connections with the local community), local Korean students’ motivation to achieve in English frequently lags in comparison to the non-local population of students.
Rich Koreans have chosen to educate their children in international schools here, rather than revamp their own educational system by improving public schools or developing a system of private education (intended for the local community, taught to an accepted curriculum and provided in Korean and/or other languages). While I understand the logical motivators for such, it is the expat families here on short-term stays (2-3 years) who pay a price for it.
Like the old Korean expression, “The arms fold inward” So should efforts to educate foreign Non-Korean speaking barbarians. The kids deserve the best education they can get. I agree with the non-Korean speaking policy. I do think formal Korean language classes should be offered. I am not sure to whom Mr. Carr’s dig was intended so I will offer this. Teaching the kids about the Bible is a good thing if it is done with respect for other faiths and yes, even Catholicism. Mr. Carr, you are correct on many levels. I hope the new school does not become the disaster many purport it will.
I agree with Sperwer that gaining access to Yongsan International School will be the objective of all Korean elites. That SIS is 95% Korean speaks volumes to this impulse. ICS is about 35% ethnic-Korean student body, with another 35% being mixed-blood, 10% white, and 15% other East Asian (Japanese, Indonesian) and maybe 5% black or South Asian. Nobody at ICS is “poor” by any reasonable definition of the word; most of the Korean families of my daughters’ classmates are in fact quite wealthy, and there are a number of minor-country ambassadors and military-attaches’ kids attending. The difference is, the multinational-employee families are paying ICS out of their own pockets — it’s a local-hire’s school. But definitely the curriculum and feel of the school are “Western.”
But I have to ask: How will the supposedly-inevitable hijacking of ICS be any different from what we have at SFS now? That place, last I checked, was mostly rich Koreans too, and word is that admissions “rules” are frequently bent for the right price.
Koreans value education highly, but not so highly that they will allow the improvement of their rotten public schools. We can only blame them for the second trait.
Koreans value education highly, but not so highly that they will allow the improvement of their rotten public schools. We can only blame them for the second trait.
There is a helluva lot of improvement that needs to be made — from test-oriented teaching and test score worship to parents not demanding that teachers teach and parents not taking responsibility for theirs and their children’s behavior — but there’s little an individual can do that will effect real change in this matter. I talked about playing renegade and starting my own extralegal charter school, something I could get away with if my child is not a Korean citizen, but this is not something a typical Korean national could pursue.
Maybe Cheju-do’s new “autnomous status” will provide some alternative ideas.
Brendon:
Your facts about SFS are wrong. Less than 50% of the student body is ethnic Korean. Of the Koreans, at least one parent has to be a foreign national, and while we all know that certainly isn’t a guarantee of much except their adroitness in getting a foreign passport, most of the hyphenated Koreans really are quite westernized and are sufficently competent in English that they don’t drag classes down to ESL levels. I can’t speak to the other hearsay innuendo you’ve chosen to pass along, but even if it’s true its scope clearly is so limited as not to affect the overall tenor of the school. The clear contrast is with SIS, which purports to be a foreign school, but is really a foreign administered school, providing a western style education for, as you indicate, a student body that is over 90% local Koreans. I wish ICS well, but I think that is the direction in which they are going to be compelled to go by the Foundation.
I’m not the one saying that the presence of ethnic Koreans forces the school to “plod along” at a low level. That’s not the case at ICS now. My experience is it’s a good school with loving teachers and an absence of smugness. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Seoul International School and Korea International School are good schools too.
I dunno, but I’m more than willing to give them all the benefit of the doubt.
But that’s not the issue, and I don’t understand why you keep trying to make this about the supposed disdain that the critics of the ICS appointment at Yongsan have for ICS (and by implication, the others). The simple fact is, as I’ve said before, that the people who object to the Foundation reneging on its deal with BIS and substituting ICS just want a different kind of education for their children — one that they justifiably believe isn’t going to happen in a school effectively controlled by and predominantly populated by Koreans — a perfectly legitimate position, unless I suppose, you’re like the Koreans who feel that anything contrary to Korean practice is an implicit denigration of them.
Thank you Lord for the blessing of not having to make children-related choices at this hour. I can’t imagine the patience necessary to do so…All of you who do have my deepest respect.
Argh! You’ve caught me!
Quite right. Rather, you said that, despite SIS having a 95% Korean enrollment, expat parents were somehow wrong in thinking that there was a negative effect in terms of language.
I’m a teacher, and other teachers talk to me with knowledge of that. As it happens, I know one of the teachers at the above-mentioned school, and have talked with others there - that’s what they say.
While volunteering at SFS a few years ago, I asked the headmaster about their highly restrictive admission policy requiring at least one parent to hold a foreign passport. He explained that the mission of SFS was to provide an English-medium education to the foreign community,not to be an alternative to the Korean education system for Koreans. There is a waiting list as it is, and if the restriction were loosened, many non-Korean speaking expatriate children would not be able to get in. The ethnic Korean population at SFS is about 40%.
The number of LEP (limited English proficiency) students is limited to two per class. This is probably why Brendan’s daughter was waitlisted.
I taught at an English-medium expatriate school in China for four years. The student body was 70% Korean, 90% non-native speaker. Many of the students were bright, and most were hardworking; however, a majority did not have sufficient English skills to do challenging AP or IB-level academic work. If I were a parent in Korea, I would be concerned about enrolling my child in a school with a large non-native English-speaking population. A child can attain oral proficiency in a foreign language in a short period of time, but it takes 5-7 years on average for a language learner to reach full academic proficiency. If these Korean students at KIS and SIS have been educated in English-mediums schools since kindergarten, then they would be expected to possess English skills sufficient to do challenging work, but if the population is transient with kids coming in from Korean schools in every grade, then yes, based on my experience as a teacher, I’d be concerned about the English.
I’d also be concerned about my child fitting in. A Korean-American couple who are friends of mine were considering moving to a suburb with an excellent school system, but the schools are about 95% white, and the couple want a more diverse population as classmates for their Asian-American daughters. This is not racism, and a foreign family is not racist to prefer that their children attend a diverse school rather than one that almost exclusively ethnic Korean.
As for the “Korean effect” on education, the only expectations our Korean parents communicated frequently were “more homework” and “speak English only,no Korean.” Our school followed an American curriculum with a PYP program in the elementary school. Our teachers were mostly North American, used North American teaching methods, and this was fine with our Korean parents. They weren’t just looking for English; they wanted North American-style education. The only subject they were dissatisifed with was math. Asian students are about one year ahead of North American students in learning computation skills.
Not enough English for scissors and paste!
Mr. Carr, the kindergarten curriculum has changed since you and I were kids. Our kinders are expected to master the consonants and short vowels and are introduced to some long vowel spelling patterns by the end of the year. These kids participate in guided reading, pointing at words and reciting along with the teacher. They write sentences, mostly copying, but some who pick up print concepts and spelling quickly are able to produce their own sentences.
I do see your point, though. I taught ESL to nine kinders who started the year with zero English. Most of them were fluent orally and their literacy skills were at or near grade level by the end of the year. I think it is because there is already a long waiting list, SFS feels it can be so restrictive in its admissions.
Well, the thing is, mixed-race kids with an English-speaking parent who show up for assessment with a high level of passive understanding (i.e., can follow almost all instructions in the English language) but limited production skills are usually not really ESL students. They have English locked up inside but need an opportunity to use it. In my daughter’s case, it took about three weeks at ECLC before she came home babbling away in English.
Well, the thing is, mixed-race kids with an English-speaking parent who show up for assessment with a high level of passive understanding (i.e., can follow almost all instructions in the English language) but limited production skills are usually not really ESL students. They have English locked up inside but need an opportunity to use it. In my daughter’s case, it took about three weeks at ECLC before she came home babbling away in English.
The “niece” I had mentioned earlier was at least as functional at English as Brendon describes his daughter. I would hardly call her understanding passive, since she primarily communicates — and she communicates a lot — in English. With her mother, her mother’s friends and American relatives, her own friends, at her Catholic kindergarten and day care, etc. The only person with whom she regularly speaks only Korean is her father who, because of his job, probably spends no more than an hour with her during the week.
Originally, she couldn’t even get on SFS’s list at all: she is a US-born American citizen and her mother is a naturalized US citizen, but SFS determined that since the mother is not the breadwinner, the child would be ineligible. When that rule was changed (or they backed off because of the family friend’s insistence), they determined after just a few minutes with this 100% ethnic Korean child that she was at ESL level and therefore low priority.
At any rate, I think some of us need to take matters into our own hands and start our own “charter school.” I understand why AmCham is trying to push what they’re trying to push (and frankly, I support that mission), but there has to be a reasonable and affordable solution for the rest of us.
As mandated by law, all schools in the States use formal assessments to determine English language proficiency. First, a home language survey is given, which asks three questions:
1. Does your child speak a language other than English?
2. Is another language spoken at home besides English?
3. Which language does your child use most often?
If there is a “yes” answer to at least one question, then the law requires the school to administer an English proficiency test. As a private overseas school, SFS does not have to adhere to US laws and regulations, but as an accredited school, it would have in place regulations and assessments.
Students with limited production skills ARE English Language Learners. Your daughter has an English-speaking father, but I would guess that prior to entering school, she spent more time communicating in Korean than English. From your description it sounds like she would have qualified for ESL services at a US public school. About half of our ESL population was born in the US, and many are English-dominant.
It is not surprising that her fluency jumped so quickly. As you said, she had had a lot of exposure to English, and as long as the bilingual issue was handled correctly so that she wasn’t one of those kids with no real native language, she would have been expected to exit ESL very quickly.
With native-English speaking and Korean-speaking parents and attending an English-medium school in Korea, your daughter is in an ideal situation to develop full proficiency in both languages. What I observe here in the US is that many children from non-English speaking homes become English dominant after one or two years in school and often avoid speaking the native language at home. This is natural since the child spends at least six hours a day communicating in English and perhaps only one hour at day in conversation at home with the parents.
Well, now I have to brag: Deborah *is* developing full proficiency in both languages. And when I say full, I mean full. She read English at a fourth-grade level while in first grade, and she has passed Korea’s national Chinese-character exam certifying reading knowledge of 700 characters and writing knowledge of 450.
And I’m not an ESL teacher myself, but if the answer to “Which language does your child use most often?” is “Yes”, then the school is probably safe to assume there may be a problem.
More on the “hagwon” rumor: It’s not true. ICS will be moving over to the Yongsan Foreign School campus with its current 550 students, plus it seems most of the current ICS waiting list will be able to attend — since there is now space to accommodate them. But this autumn, because of the short lead time until school starts, ICS will not be able to hire enough teachers and staff to allow utilization of all 1000 places which the facilities could theoretically accommodate. So there will not be a massive influx of students to “use up” all 1000 places this fall, which would inevitably produce the tidal-wave of local kids.
As a foreign school, ICS will be subject to the same legal requirement that its students be non-citizens of Korea; this requirement applies equally to ICS, SFS, SIS, KIS, and others. Because of limited supply of places, foreign schools rank the “foreignness” of the prospective student. Kids with one Korean-citizen parent — like my kids –are “less foreign” and have lower priority for admissions purposes than do kids with two non-citizen parents. Lowest priority is accorded to kids holding a foreign passport whose parents both hold Korean passports. These kids go to the back of the bus, because they are “less foreign” (really, not at all foreign) under the Ministry of Education’s rules.
Now, a cynic might say that the same rules apply to SIS and KIS, and they’re almost exclusively Koreans who pretend foreign citizenship. But if one takes account of the locations of these schools — SIS in Seongnam, and KIS in Pangyo (when it was a new school it was closer to the expat districts but still across the river in Banpo-dong), it might be seen that the populations of the schools reflect the populations of their neighborhoods. People living in Sungbuk-dong aren’t eager to put their kids on a bus to Seongnam. But if SIS and KIS attracted more non-Korean applicants, those applicants would go to the head of the line and bump “less foreign” Korean kids, which would affect the mix. It’s not those schools’ “fault” that foreigners won’t go there.
Of the current 550 ICS students, maybe two dozen are “ESL” students but not all of them are ethnic-Korean ESL students. We have some kids from Russia, Japan, and others who show up needing ESL. But because not everyone at the school is Korean the language of the hallways and playgrounds is definitely English.
Contrary to fears, ICS also has a very successful Advanced Placement Program for its high school students. The scope of the program has been limited by the number of students in ICS’s high school — fewer students means fewer AP students. Now that we will have an expanded enrollment at ICS, the Advanced Placement courses will expand as well. Whether or not ICS will offer an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme for its senior high is open to debate. Personally, I hope not, because of the IB’s generally weird leftiness — IB promotes the United Nations as the solution to all the world’s ills.
The foregoing statement about some students not having the capacity for “[Advanced Placement (AP)] or IB-level academic work” being the reason to doubt the quality of a high school raises some questions: Is the only worthy student one who is an AP or IB-level student? Are we only to accept schools that have rigorous AP Programs? What about the native English-speaking student who doesn’t have the capacity for AP-level work? If an AP-level student is not able to enroll in AP classes because of some capacity problem at the kid’s high school, is his entire life thereby ruined?
I ask this as a student who completed no less than seven AP courses, including various history, literature, and sciences, at my well-funded public high school starting in my sophomore year (apparently my behavior at the time was, well, sophomoric and my grades reflected it). All of my scores were fives, which was then the highest score. Some of my classmates and friends weren’t enrolled in the AP courses, and to my knowledge they’ve done just fine. Some of the AP students became burned-out druggies, while some of the “reg’lar ol’ dummies” have become extremely wealthy. I don’t think that AP had much to do with the results.
Anyway, given that not all native English speakers are going to be able to successfully complete AP courses, my own feeling is that even if a would-be foreign school operator isn’t offering AP courses, so what? These kinds of quibbles are insufferably elitist.
Bendon, Brendon, Brendon:
I’m sure you’re doing well by your daughters. Give it a rest.
Brendon wrote:
If an AP-level student is not able to enroll in AP classes because of some capacity problem at the kid’s high school, is his entire life thereby ruined?
Frankly, I think it’s often opposite (well, not their life ruined so much as their college experience). The very courses people seek to eliminate with successful AP scores are those that often lay the crucial foundation for the college experience as a whole.
A high school course geared toward passing an exam cannot compare with a university course. I think it is a disservice to push kids to pass all these tests and thus shortchange them when it comes to their college experience.
I agree with you. I do not care whether the kids are capable of AP-level work or not. However, some tuition-paying native speaker parents do care. Our “competition” was a school run by evangelical Christians; their English language admission standards were higher than ours, so they were more successful in recruiting both native-speakers and non-native speakers proficient in English.
In other words, the issue for our school wasn’t the lack of AP courses. It was the English proficiencies of the student body. I just used the AP/honors example to explain that many of these kids were probably capable of doing superior academic work in their native languages, but not in English.
It doesn’t sound like ICS has this issue at all.
Brendon has this one well covered. If I could make a few comments on other aspects, the British school vs. Foundation imbroglio was a serious case of cross-cultural misunderstanding on both sides. The Brits thought everything was sewn up, but they failed to realize that when the Foundation chairman changed they had to start over again (yes, this sucks, but this is Korea). Of course, by Western standards the Foundation didn’t play fair by throwing out the previous understanding (in a letter of intent form, not binding contract), but we are in Korea and Korean entities are providing the facilities. You have to respect that and in the end the Brits didn’t. Good luck ICS.
Brendon: Are you advising ICS? Did you help their proposal? If you are, good job. Just some rumors I’m hearing.
Wedge: Brendon has this covered, but with the strong bias that he admits, for ICS. If a new chairman were to come in and turf out ICS, he’d get the point that what is upsetting people here is the process. The rest is subordinate.
My advice to ICS was limited to this single suggestion: Since ICS’s international network of Christian schools operates a parallel, non-religious curriculum they call “OASIS” schools, it might be helpful to their proposal to the Foreign Schools Foundation to mention that a secular curriculum is available if necessary. That’s it. Modesty forbids me from claiming this one suggestion was the deciding factor — but come on, we all know it’s true. I’m just that awesome.
Well, since they signed an operating agreement (i.e. binding contract) this morning, I don’t see this happening any time soon. And I think most of us who have done business here for a while understand personal relationships are more important than paper, especially letters of intent. I think the Brit school may have lost sight of that (I’m analyzing with the benefit of hindsight, of course).
That didn’t work as planned. I was responding to Mike’s comment:
“If a new chairman were to come in and turf out ICS, he’d get the point that what is upsetting people here is the process.”
What is the “+US$xxxx” figure you’ve included in each of those tuition amounts?
Brendon Carr wrote:
I wish all that were true, but it looks like the reality might be different. I’m a foreigner who recently took a job here in Seoul and applied to ICS for a place for my stepdaughter in grade 11. Her and her mother have both South African and Taiwanese citizenship, I’m British, her English is 100% fluent after growing up in S.A., and the application was submitted on July 3, shortly after it was announced that ICS would run the new Yongsan school. No response from ICS until July 12, when they informed that there wouldn’t be a place for her. This raises some general questions that I discussed in a response to ICS, and quote from below in case anyone is interested:
“When I decided to accept the offer of a job as research professor at Seoul National University, one major consideration was that the new Yongsan Foreign School would be opening this fall and was intended explicitly for people in my situation, i.e. foreigners whose decision to come and work here was relying on the availability of quality affordable education for their children. (On a university salary such as mine the tuition costs at the other international schools here are simply out of range; in fact they seem ridiculously expensive compared to the cost of international schools in the other countries where I have worked.) I noted some cynical discussion in the expat community (e.g. on various internet sites) that the new school would simply be another “hagwon” for the children of the local elites, but took comfort in assurances from the Korea Foreign School Foundation that this would not be the case and that the new school really would be first and foremost for the children of foreigners who have come to work here. To hear now that there isn’t a place for my kid is therefore a huge and distressing shock. Considering that the decision to award the running of Yongsan Foreign School to ICS was made at the end of June, it seems quite amazing that there is no place available for a genuine foreigner who applies in the beginning of July. This raises questions about the extent to which the new school will really be a school for children of expats as opposed to those of the local elites, which I imagine will be of interest and concern to the expat community at large.
I would very much appreciate some clarification on the selection process at ICS, the priority (or lack thereof) that my daughter has in this process, and an estimate of how long she would need to be on a waiting list before managing to get a place at your School. I would also appreciate any suggestions you may have for how I might be able to “solve” this problem (besides simply quitting my job and moving to another country where affordable schooling for children of foreigners is available). For example, would it be possible for her to initially enter grade 10 at you school and switch to grade 11 when a place becomes available? Or how about if I homeschooled her following your grade 11 syllabus until a place opened up? (The feasability of these options would of course depend on how long she is likely to remain on the waiting list.) Any other advice that you might have would be much appreciated.”
I include the last part in case anyone here has any suggestions or advice as well…
The admissions “season” is basically closed in April of the year of entry. ICS’s places for September 2006 are filled in May, and tuition is paid in full at that time. Your application in July would require ICS to kick out a student whose family has already paid for school.
Kids who apply in July still might get in, when and as other kids whose places are guaranteed by payment of tuition drop out of the school as the start date approaches. But with school starting August 11, you must look for other alternatives.
Seoul Foreign School and Seoul International School are almost always oversubscribed, with waiting lists in some cases years long, so I doubt there would be places there.
Korea International School in Pangyo has a beautiful facility. It’s expensive but looks like a good school. Pangyo is relatively close to SNU. I would wager that a great many SNU faculty (especially the anti-foreign ones) have their kids enrolled at KIS.
Indianhead International School in Uijongbu is almost always undersubscribed. But it’s in Uijongbu which is the opposite side of the universe from the SNU area where you’ll be working.
ICS operates two other K-12 schools in Pyeongtaek and Uijongbu. They are also relatively speaking “quite affordable” at around W7,500,000 per year. The bad news is, if you live too close to your kid’s school it will be an hour’s commute (or more in traffic) to SNU. Recently I took the subway from Samsung Station to Pyongtaek and it was 100 minutes. I think SNU is 20 minutes closer than I was.
A city in the midpoint is Osan, where you can each head off in different directions in the morning. Osan-SNU is 30 minutes, and about 30 minutes to Pyongtaek from there as well. I have a friend who lives in Osan and works in Seoul and he loves it.
But I have to wonder if maybe you’re a “ringer” who’s been put forward to ask these questions to make ICS look bad. You mean to say that once the school was selected as a preferred negotiating partner June 22, 2006, to negotiate an operating agreement which they finalized on July 4, 2006 — a week ago — you decided to come to Seoul and take advantage of all the empty places that would miraculously appear? How long were you considering your position at SNU? Why didn’t you apply to schools in Korea at the time you started to talk to SNU? (I think I know this one, since most of ‘em charge W200,000 or more for an application.)
If it’s because I mused here on the Marmot’s Hole that some of the current waitlisted students might be able to attend in the fall, due to the expansion of capacity, I’m sorry. I don’t represent the school.
Foreign schools in Seoul usually charge tuition in two components: Korean won plus some in US Dollars. According to sources, the US Dollars are spent on direct purchases of books and curriculum materials, and airplane tickets for incoming teachers, without paying the higher prices that prevail in Seoul.
Brendon,
Thanks for the information. And honestly, no, I’m not a “ringer” but am completely genuine about this and am now wondering what the hell I’m going do. Feel free to contact me privately at dadams(at)phya.snu.ac.kr - at least then you can see that I really am at SNU as claimed.
Regarding alternative schools, KIS would have been a good possibility if it wasn’t for their exorberant tuition fees. (Our apartment is beside the SNU campus, so KIS would be best location-wise.)
As for your (understandable) surprise that I didn’t sort out the school stuff much earlier, the explanations are:
(i) This is the first time I have encountered huge waiting lists for international schools. On the 3 previous ocassions that I have been through this in other countries, it was no problem getting a place when applying about 6 weeks in advance. There is nothing on the ICS website to indicate that their admissions season closes on April and places are filled in May. For example, in the “payment options for new students” information it is stated that “…all new students must pay tuition and fees within 10 business days after admission or prior to the first day of classes, whichever date occurs first”. Nothing there to suggest that there is an April-May deadline for getting a place.
(ii) I asked the prof who was arranging my SNU job about this, and he reckoned it would be no problem to send in the application after I came here.
(iii) I was waiting to see what would happen about the new Yongsan school. From the murky information I had seen about it earlier on the internet, apparently it was supposed to be a great new facility with room for 1000 students and tuition in the region of 10 million won (way cheaper than the other international schools here). I had imagined (naively?) that whoever was chosen to operate this school would easily be able to find places for new genuine foreign applicants who applied right after the choice of operator was announced. The choice of ICS was announced at the end of June (although maybe it didn’t become official until early July), so a few days later I send off the application to them. Actually, I was happy that ICS was chosen to operate the new school, since I’ve heard nothing but good about them. (Believe it or not, not all of us brits have an instinctive loathing of the US education system, and as long as my kid gets a good education in the core subjects in a supportive environment I can easily put up with a bit of bible study etc. She has been in a similar school in Taiwan and it was fine.)
The thing that surprises me most is that ICS waited 10 days to tell me that there wasn’t a place: I sent the application by email on July 3 and heard nothing until July 12. If their places were already full then why the delay? The only plausible explanation I can think of is that their places weren’t already full; that they were still making admissions decisions during this time. In that case I am of course more than curious to know what priority level my kid receieved in the process, and whether the available places instead went to locals (which would be totally against what this new school is supposed to be for). With hindsight I should of course have contacted the school earlier to find out what the situation was. But I had asked them when submitting the application to please let me know asap if they didn’t have an available place, and therefore took no news to be good news.
Hope that clarifies things.
This is what’s known as a “teachable moment”. Your disaster will help warn others, if we leave a record.
For the record: No foreign person coming to Korea to work for a Korean organization should ever, ever depend on the “no problem” assessment of a Korean person. It’s counter-intuitive because this guy lives here and supposedly is looking out for your interests. But he’s not — he’s looking out for his interests. And his interest is to get you here by hook or by crook.
Even if the guy wasn’t simply blowing sunshine up your ass to trick you, the fact is very, very few Koreans have any meaningful understanding of the issues important to expats. It’s like asking me where to buy good-tasting kimchi in St. Louis. The hell if I know: I don’t eat the stuff.
If in doubt, check it out. Ask another foreign resident of Seoul first. There are a ton of resources on the Internet. Dave’s ESL Cafe ought to be horrifyingly instructive.
Your daughter is in 11th grade? If you can’t make a foreign school happen, consider simply dispatching her to the local high school. She doesn’t speak Korean? So what? Throw her in the deep end; she’ll speak well enough at the end of the year. She’s not suddenly going to become stupid — a lot of my American high school classmates went on foreign-exchange programs (or came over on foreign-exchange programs) their junior or senior year. Think of it like that. Half-Chinese is a better story than half-Korean, unfortunately.
You could also contact Seoul American High School, which is the US military’s high school in Seoul. It accepts non-military tuition-paying students if space is available. One of my law school classmates attended and graduated from SAHS instead of SFS, even though her family was not military. Call over there and ask: (02) 7916-5319. There is also Osan American High School in Songtan (down near Pyeongtaek, so it’s a long commute to Seoul, at least an hour). I don’t know how these schools are doing capacity-wise, so there might not be places. But at this point, you’ve got to try everything.
Speaking of trying everything, since your daughter is half-Chinese and therefore presumably speaks Mandarin, why not the Chinese school here in Seoul? These guys are harder to find, but if your wife calls the Taiwan or PRC embassies they will gladly spit up the numbers. I think the high school is in Yeonhee-dong somewhere near SFS. Recently I read that the Chinese schools are being saved by Korean enrollees.
Brendon, thanks very much for your constructive suggestions. I’ll think over this situation some more and give you a call tomorrow if that’s ok.
Your idea of dispatching her to a local high school is interesting, although I heard somewhere that the public school system here is a disaster (isn’t that why the rich locals want to get their kids into international schools?). As for Seoul American High School, I have to admit that “military” makes me nervous. (No offence to military folks out there, it’s probably just an irrational phobia.) I doubt the Chinese school would be an option since she can’t read/write Mandarin - her schooling has all been in English. The biggest question for me right now is how long she would have to spend on the ICS waitinglist before getting a place. E.g. I could imagine ICS would be in the process of trying to hire new teachers to allow them to fill up the new school, in which case maybe they will have more places available from next semester. In that case, spending a semester at a local high school and then going to ICS/Yongsan might not be too bad. Probably I’ll head out to ICS on Monday and see if I can talk to someone there about this in person.
Monday’s a public holiday, so a trip over to ICS will be a waste. Nobody will be home. As for whether a spot will open up in the second semester, that’s a long shot. There isn’t going to be a massive expansion this year. Just getting the library boxed up and moved over there in time to open in August will be a huge challenge. And there really isn’t a huge supply of extra teachers to be recruited mid-year. Our experience has been that one or two places do open in every class after the winter break. Whether or not you get that place is really a matter of timing. I would imagine the ICS waitlist got a lot longer after late June when the selection was announced. July 3 is no doubt farther down the list than you expect. My guess is you are looking at fall 2007 entry.
Your phobia about Seoul American High School is irrational. Nobody’s going to shave your daughter’s head and put her into the Marines. (Unless she wants to — as you might expect, they do have Junior ROTC over there.) Why not go take a look? The base is an oasis of green.
As for the local schools being a disaster, they are — for Koreans. Koreans judge the quality of a school by one measure: Will it get my child into Seoul National University? SNU has a worldwide reputation as a joke, so you are probably less interested in having your child climb over the carcasses of all those failed applicants to get in there. For a foreign kid to pick up a foreign language and kill time until a place in an international curriculum opens up, the local schools will be just fine.
At a Chinese school she’d be less handicapped by language, since she can speak and understand. Gotta start with the characters sometime, and younger is better.
Ok, thanks again, that’s food for thought.
But I have to say that the more I think about this situation the more it grates. Am I not exactly the type of person that this new foreign school was set up for? (Ok, so I’m not bringing in foreign financial investment, but foreign “scientific investment” instead - which is in principle supposed to be helping to raise the research level here, which is in turn supposed to indirectly make the place more attractive for high tech businesses etc - at least that’s the theory.) So I hear about this great-sounding new foreign school that’s being built, which will be opening at just the right time that I’m coming here, will cost lots less than the other ridiculously overpriced foreign schools, and I monitor the internet to try to find out when and how to sign up for it. For a long time there’s no concrete information; then by chance a google search reveals rumors that apparently BISS will be running the school. Then apparently BISS won’t be running it, and a while later apparently ICS is tapped to run it, but nothing definite yet, and certainly nothing about it on their webpage. So we continue to search the internet, looking for where to sign up for this new school, and the searches continue to come up empty.
The first I heard that ICS was tapped to run the school was a post on the seoul expat-advisory service forum (http://www.expat-advisory.com/forumseoul) on July 26, referring to a newspaper article from July 24, and which I didn’t see until around July 27-28. (Unfortunately the obligations of my job prevented me from monitoring the internet full-time to detect these developments as they happened.)
So straight away I go to the ICS webpage, expecting to see a message along the lines of “Hey folks, we’re gonna be running the new Yongsan school, so if you want your kids to go there then send us your applications”. But the webpage contains no such message, nor does it give any indication at all that ICS is going to have anything to do with Yongsan.
At this point you’re probably thinking “Why didn’t he just give ICS a call or send them an email?”. Well yes, of course I should have done that, isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing. But in my stupidity I thought “No need to bother them, they’ll announce the situation re. Yongsan when it’s settled, and will no doubt provide instructions for applications etc at that time.” So I continue to simply monitor their webpage for new info, resisting the urge to be a nuisance by bothering them with an enquiry about something that they would surely announce themselves once it’s settled. “There’s no cause for worry” I thought, “the new school is much larger than the current ICS, they’ll be hiring new teachers, expanding the number of classes, and my kid will be in the top priority group for applications. All we need to do is sit tight and wait for them to announce that everything’s settled and that applications for Yongsan can now be submitted.”
By early July we start to get a bit nervous though, and on July 3 I decide to send in an application to ICS without further delay. It wasn’t clear to me at that point that ICS would definitely be running Yongsan, but in any case ICS itself was a very good school from what I had heard, so if the Yongsan thing fell through and my kid ended up going there that would also be fine.
The days go by and no response to the ICS application is forthcoming. Well yes, probably I should have given them a call. But it just isn’t my wont to bother people about things that they will inform me about of their own accord when they are in a position to do so. If ICS had anything to tell me about the application they would tell me, right?
And in this situation no news must surely be good news - if they weren’t able to accomodate the application they’d have said so right away, right? After all, they’re reasonable, thinking human beings and would surely realise the importance and urgency for me to know about this, right? Well, apparently not. Today (Friday) I get back to the office after a few days away and find an email from ICS from July 12 informing me that sorry, we’ve no place for your kid, welcome to join our waitlist.
Sorry Brendon but this is just a totally rotten situation and someone’s gonna have to be crucified. At no point in this whole Yongsan saga was it ever made clear when or how to apply for this new school. Would it not have been fair and reasonable that whoever got chosen to operate the school should openly announce the extra places which they were able to offer as a result of it, and ensure that these places went in the first instance to the people that the school was actually intended for? Please note that my application went to ICS on July 3, and that they were not officially unveiled as the Yongsan operator until July 4. If it turns out, as seems to be the case, that ICS has simply given the extra places to people who were on their waitlist *before* they were officially chosen as operator on July 4, and this included kids of a lower priority than the ones for whom the school is intended, then ICS must be slammed mercilessly, don’t you agree? Yes, I’m sorry about it too - by all accounts they’re a very good school with dedicated, well-meaning staff. But they’ve chosen to do favours for locals on their waitlist instead of announcing their extra places openly and ensuring that the kids that got them were the ones for who the new school is intended. Don’t try to tell me that the new places they’ve got out of this have all gone to real foreigners.
Besides that, I’m still mighty puzzled about how it could take them 10 days to inform me that they didn’t have any more places if it’s really true as you said that they didn’t have any more places at the time that I applied on July 3. Hopefully they will come clean about this in due course.
I do appreciate your efforts to suggest alternatives in this situation, but right now I’m having a hard time to see the positive side of my stepdaughter having to take a year off from her academic studies and do nothing besides learn the lingo in a local high school, or the other possibilities you mentioned. It is still not too late though for ICS to do the right thing and open up places for the real foreigners who had been intending for their kids to go to Yongsan and who applied to ICS at or before the time that they were officially awarded the contract on July 4. (Am I the only one?) The temporary overcrowding would surely be a price worth paying for avoiding the longterm damage to their credibility that will otherwise result. At any rate, I’ll be doing my best to kick up a stink until this happens.
As for Seoul American High School, I have to admit that “military” makes me nervous.
I want to second Brendon’s comment about SAHS.
Since I go there so often that I sometimes forget how many people — not just Koreans, but internationals, and even many Americans — are put off by the notion of going/being inside Yongsan Garrison.
While you will see a good number of people running around in military uniforms, the vast majority are wearing civilian attire. American civilians and Korean civilians abound and the atmosphere is closer to that of a small town in America than a military base.
This carries over to the high school as well. I have two separate work experiences with SAHS that gave me some insight into the schools, and they are about as normal American as anything. In fact, they are probably better than most, because the unique structure tends to have weeded out the kids who are troublemakers.
The military members themselves are no automatons, holding diverse opinions about even military issues, and this certainly holds true for the teachers and the students at SAHS as well. She is not going to be indoctrinated with anything.
And because of the ethnically diverse population and the fact that many of the kids there are sympathetic to having been moved to a brand-new school every few years, they would probably be welcoming of a new face in 11th grade.
A friend who is a DoD contractor had — for a couple months — some worry that there might not be space for her daughter at Seoul American Elementary School, but space did open up. I say that because I’m really not sure if there would be space at SAHS. But it is worth a try. It is relatively cheaper and it is a good school.
David - Don’t worry, none of the 11th graders are in the military! Sorry, couldn’t resist. I do hope you find an affordable option. Really, the SAHS isn’t a bad option, if available, even if just until you can get her into the school of your choice.
If all else fails, you could also look into some sort of accredited home study program.
David, accusatory and blamey is the wrong way to go about things in a situation where the outcome you want is totally dependent on people’s goodwill. If you want to know why the British School got turfed, consider that the Foundation felt they were accusatory and blamey. If you want to sweet-talk your daughter into ICS or another foreign school, it helps to be sweet. Most families spend a year or two on the waiting list.
You dropped the ball by thinking you could parachute into Seoul without arrangements and still enroll in a foreign school. Late June or early July is simply too late, regardless of your experiences elsewhere: “Here is Korea.” Cursory checking — at places other than the thinly-trafficked expat-advisory.com — would have revealed this assumption to be dangerously false. By the way, the British School has no senior curriculum; if in July they had signed an operating agreement instead of ICS there would probably still be no room at the inn for the 11th grade this fall.
As for why you didn’t get an immediate answer, I think the ICS offices were more or less closed from late June through the 7th of July. There was of course a focus on getting the operating agreement signed as priority number one, and then people kind of dropped dead from exhaustion.
There are no extra places opening at the Yongsan school this fall. Logistically it’s going to be a nightmare to get the current ICS configuration simply moved over there. In September 2007 there will be an expansion of capacity at which time additional kids will be admitted. So you ought to drop the conspiracy theories and accusations of corruption and focus on how best to solve this problem which is solely of your own making.
The longer you are here, the more you’ll understand: Deep down, Korea thinks all foreigners are “rich” — or should be rich — and really only wants rich (white) foreigners to come here, dump all their money, and go home penniless. Join a Chamber of Commerce and see what kinds of goods are on offer to the members; check out all the high-priced apartments available to you. So, no, David, Korea has not contributed to the construction of a new foreign school to serve people like you (or me, or Kushibo). It’s intended to lure tycoons here to build factories.