As you all already know, US President Barack Obama praised the Korean education system yesterday:
“Our children _ listen to this _ our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea every year,” Obama told a gathering at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. “That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy.”
As the KT points out, this comes as a shock to many in Korea, land of the “goose father,” international school controversies, constant bitching about private tutoring and never-ending talk of public education reform.
An official with the Korean Education Development Institute quoted in the JoongAng Ilbo noted that while American kiddies have fewer days of school, they actually have more hours of class a day. Still, as the JoongAng points out, the Korean system has produced results — Korea has higher high school graduation rates (for those aged 25—34) and university graduation rates than the United States (not necessarily a positive, IMHO), and while Korea places in the upper ranks of international academic evaluations, the United States finishes in the bottom ranks.
Of course, one might question whether it would make a difference if you sent American kids to school for the same amount of days as Korean kids without first adopting Korea’s cultural zeal for education. In fact — and I know I’m stepping onto sensitive ground here — Asian-American kids seem to do just fine in the US educational system, despite its many flaws.
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Someone said this a while back (paraphrased): If you pass just by your ass warming a seat and you get beat if you don’t put your ass in that seat, it’s easy to get high graduation percentages.
After spending a dozen years as a teacher in Korea, my view of the Korean education system is as such– “the answer to 25 is ㄱ, the answer to 26 is ㄹ, the answer to 27 is ㄴ.”
Really good system if you want to have a bunch of robots. If you want to have a society that UNDERSTANDS WHY 2+2=4, then it is far from good. Also, I think it is abusive that kids in high school have to live on 4-5 hours of sleep for 3 years.
That is not to say that the US system is without its faults. But, at least the kids coming out a.) not missing out on their childhoods and b.) generally being able to have a critical thought.
Not sure if “being able to have a critical thought” is such a great thing if you can’t read, add or find Canada or Mexico on a map.
I dunno, as I pointed out on my post about this thet KT reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllllllly was liberal with “laud.” He mentioned Korea twice, twice in seven sentences. As you read the first time was about how Korean students spend a lot longer (calendar-wise) in school, though public teachers know Korean students are off two months in the winter, one month in the summer, and have loads of down time (including a couple weeks of not doing anything after finals). Sure, there are optional extra-curricular activities and half-day Saturdays with even more club activities, but there’s not a huge difference between time spent in school. Hagwon, now that’s another matter.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/03/president-obama-likes-koreas-education.html
And the second mention of Korea wasn’t that flattering. Paraphrase: “Hell, if South Korea can do it, the good ol’ Red, White, and Blue can, too.”
Korea does have a lot to teach the US regarding education—the biggest thing is attitude toward it—though I don’t think he was singling out Korea among all nations as a standard of excellence. Hell, reading it made me think he had confused Korea with Japan.
Combining the best of both systems might be a good idea. Also I’m not convinced that students all over America are great critical thinkers, nor that Korean students are robots.
I have to say this about the Korean system though. I work at a rural school in Gyeonsangnamdo. The school suddenly decided it wanted an English classroom, and then they built one without much hesitation. I thought the idea was silly, until I saw this awsome classroom stocked with books and electronic chalkboards.
Contrasting this to a recent CNN report about 100 year old school buildings in South Carolina and students in Detroit bringing toilet paper to school because the school can’t afford it, I think that President Obama is wise try and refocus American’s interest in school.
(not to come off snarky but)you’re never going to get a decent education in school. You need to hit the library (or Internet) and educate yourself too. Getting a part-time job is a real learning experience. “3 strikes and you’re out. How’s that for arithmetic?”
-George H. Ruth
“Asian-American kids seem to do just fine in the US educational system, despite its many flaws.”
It’s kinda like the story of how an Indian trainer raises an elephant by tying it with a regular rope while it’s a little baby. Struggle as the little baby elephant might, it can’t break the rope so it just gives up. So when the elephant is full size, the Indian uses the same rope as before and the trained elephant doesn’t try to get away despite the fact that it can easily snap the rope.
That’s kinda like what it is to be raised by education obsessed Asian parents.
Darth Babaganoosh, I believe that was me, and yes, that’s exactly what I thought again when I read this.
3gyupsal (are you the same guy who used to post on Asia’s Rejects?), I agree that the best of both worlds would likely produce the world’s superlative education system. Unfortunately I can see the worst of both worlds coming to Korea in a decade or two. Korea could improve by such leaps just by changing the testing and evaluation system, but this would leave many – perhaps most – Korean teachers unable to cope.
#2
Asian-American kids seem to do just fine in the US educational system, despite its many flaws.
Asian-American kids are not doing fine. The Model Minority has to slug through the very same regimented ignorance factories that White, Black, Hispanic kids endure. Then, after that, an Asian-American college applicant considers one of the following: medicine, law, business, engineering, accounting. Glorified trade schools. AA’s are not highly educated, just highly trained indentured servants for Corporate America.
Asian-American kids seem to do just fine in the US educational system, despite its many flaws.
One way to improve American K-12 schools: ban compulsory education.
Brian’s right. Calling this “praise” from Obama is a bit of a stretch. If anything, it’s Obama’s irritating tendency to put everything into attention-getting soundbytes, at the cost of a little accuracy. Didn’t he do the same thing with the auto industry or something?
My thoughts on US education are similar to what Churchill said about capitalism. The US school system is the worst in the world, except for all the other ones.* I agree (with Brian again) that the US could learn a thing or two from Korea, but I wouldn’t advise the US to trade their system for Korea’s.
*Actually, from what I understand, Northern Europe seems to have the best education around. But don’t quote me on that.
‘Hell, reading it made me think he had confused Korea with Japan’.
Don’t overate the Japanese education system, it sounds very similar to Korea.
The main functions of the japanese education system, from jnr high, are
1. Teach conformity is the goal and all else must be sacrificed towards that aim.
2. The nail that sticks out will get hammered down. One of your future goals is to partake in that hammering. Jnr high school is where the apprenticeship begins.
3. Japanese are unique.
4. Japanese are monolingual and that all other languages are too difficult to learn.
5. Males do things and women are things.
6. Everything non-Japanese and that hasn’t, thru time, be pummeled into something palatable only to the Japanese, is dangerous.
7. Mine is to do and die and never to question why.
8. Japan was the victim in WW 2.
I like Obama and it is quite refreshing having an educated President, but please…….
He might as well be promoting the education system of Nazi Germany, without the anti semitism, but compensated for by a ‘wholistic’ approach to prejudice.
Strike one, Obama!
It is said that the so-called Achievement Gap is the last remaining Civil Rights struggle in the US. This gap pertains mostly to “high-need”, “high-risk”, “urban” school districts. Politically correct code words for Black and Hispanic students.
Obama is viewing the Asian educational superiority and thinking “Man, I wish my community had some of that” in the same way that a Korean-American may view pro football “Man, I wish my community had some of that”.
But I am not aware of any programs to increase the number of “under-represented minorities” (that would be Asian-Americans) in professional football.
@3 –
Yeah, Robert, but one might ask about the value in studying a language for 11 years and not being able to speak a word of it other than “Fine thank you, and you?”
…not that the US is so great at foreign language education either…
@6 –
One of the high schools I went to in DC was condemned over one summer, forcing all the students to be transferred to other schools. It was a contractor’s cash cow – asbestos, lead pipes and paint, the works. The metal detectors at the doors worked fine, though (the ones that weren’t chained shut, that is).
#2, When you get into advanced subjects, it’s almost impossible to learn in a “robotic” fashion that you’re thinking of. I’ve found that many general education systems around in the world do not teach they “why’s” of things, including America, and for good reason; the complexity is something which will not be needed for most people. Even at say, MIT, the “why’s” are not really taught unless you specifically seek out an advanced level course in it, which usually consist of about 5% of the student pop.
The biggest difference between the education systems is that Korea’s is just more bullish, and from what I recall, it’s not even that they push work towards the basic subjects, I recall young kids being swamped with a multitude of “course work” like painting and pottery. Closest thing I ever got in elementary school was sketching objects with a pencil. Also, you’ll be surprised how underrated learning from rote is as well.
However, I’m not saying this as a way to be redirecting flaws and blame, it’s just that higher education is simply commercialized in a way that the majority of the reason people attend is not out of true interest in the academics but to get a job.
actually, a lot of the flaws in the education system in Korea is aggravated as it models itself on the modern American education system – the SATs, PSATs, spelling bees and the love of multiple choice questions as well as memorizing the most technical and useless words sum up the American schooling (at least in a public school) – that’s why so many Korean kids find it easy to do well in America at least compared to the essay based, coursework based European education.
A Korean guy, graduate of Korean education system, attends MIT and produces a rechargeable battery that takes 1/1000th the usual time.
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/03/11/2009031101773.html?Dep0=chosunmain&Dep1=news&Dep2=headline4&Dep3=h4_04
What we probably need is a hybrid of the two systems.
Totally. First, all Asian chicks is hot, and nobody feels sorry for or worries about hot chicks. They’ll be fine. Second, the dudes are either straight-A students or else they vanish into video game limbo. So no need to worry about the dudes either. Thanks, Asians, for not really needin’ nuthin, ‘cept for an Ivy League dream to give purpose to them teenage years.
Having been a product of both South Korean, American AND Canadian educational systems, IMHO, “education” isn’t an amorphous thing that you can simply throw money at. Especially at the primary level, it has much to do with “educational culture” as it does with government policy: regardless of where the child goes to school, if parents aren’t invested in their child’s growth and development, the schools face an uphill battle. Some Asian parents (well, a lot of them) may be hyper-invested (which of course, causes problems), but having under-invested parents causes just as many problems as well.
I can appreciate “3gyupsal”s comments about Obama attempting to refocus American interests in education. I should point out that in America, if a school exists in a concerned community of citizens, then that school can effectively be run more like a private school and at a higher level.
One good example of such is Thrasher Elementary on Signal Mountain (Signal Mountain, Tennessee). It is a public elementary school but the administrators run it with an advanced curriculum as if it were a private school and it is better than most. America can and should do better than it has done but I would not use the Korean system as a virtuous example. I’ve seen up close poor Korean students, heads bowed down with a beaten down look as if they had sprung from a Charles Dickens novel.
No thanks.
No one’s mentioned this yet, but maybe the U.S. should look more at Finland, especially since even some Japanese are looking into it…
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080506a2.html
Motivated and well paid teachers lead the way…
Its not just inner city kids in America that have a hard time finding “the Iraq” on the map and such as.
#24
Inner city kids don’t have a hard time finding Iraq. They go to Iraq.
Go to Iraq? They freak’in LIVE in the U.S. version of Iraq…
“Totally. First, all Asian chicks is hot, and nobody feels sorry for or worries about hot chicks. They’ll be fine. Second, the dudes are either straight-A students or else they vanish into video game limbo. So no need to worry about the dudes either. Thanks, Asians, for not really needin’ nuthin, ‘cept for an Ivy League dream to give purpose to them teenage years.”
May I save this to quote later?
My children have started education in Germany now they are attending elementary school in Korea.
There are many points that have to be discussed about the educational system. But one thing is clear. They will have their 8 hours sleep, every day until the end of school, in an age when you are grwoing the permant sleep reduce here is close to malicious injury (?) (Körperverletzung).
Beside this, school sports is not enough. Children should have chance to play and do practising sports, beeing outdoor: no Hagwon. Maybe wishful thinking, but still they can.
Obama doesn’t know a damn thing about Korea. This is the way he always is. He surfs the internet until he finds some little piece of trivia and then he goes out the next day and bases a speech around it. He’s like a high school sophomore.
Re: education – Someone on this blog, don’t remember who, once said something along the lines of “I think the US education system could use a little bit of Korea, and the Korean system could use a little but of America.” Succinctly stated, and that’s my view in a nutshell. Let’s take the best of both worlds.
Yu Bum Suk also said:
which is also true.
I’ll second the idea to look towards Finland rather than Korea for education ideas. The kids there spend less time in school yet produce slightly better results.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4031805.stm
Both in schools and in the workplace, productivity here sucks. Koreans need to learn the phrase: “Work smarter, not harder.”
Might be a bit OT:
I’m aware of few fact finding missions the Korean authorities have conducted in Finland and Sweden. I don’t know how Korean could make their schools better without tearing everything apart and starting from scratch.
As one of the previous posters said, kids need time to socialize, play games and sleep. If I woke up one morning as the supreme leader of Korea, I’d eradicate the hagwon business. I admit that some private institutes might be useful and beneficial to young learners, but most of them are something totally different.
# 30,
A lot of the “work” is really face time. That’s the BS you have to deal with in a heavily confucian society.
# 31,
The blog at Grand Narrative quoted an interesting scientific study that Korean kids wear glasses more than kids in other developed countries because they study so much and stay indoor so much that they lack vitamin D while growing up, hence contributing to unusually large cases of nearsightedness.
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/why-do-so-many-korean-children-wear-glasses/
Any comparisons of educational achievement in different countries must also take into account the student population. 15% of our district student body speak a language other than English at home. Some of our children are emotionally, physically, and physiologically impacted by past or present substance abuse in the home. I can tell you from personal experience that teaching multistep tasks like arithmetic to a child born addicted to crack is no easy task. Curriculum and instruction have vastly improved in the last fifteen years, but we still cannot get ahead with the increasing number of high-needs children entering our schools.
“find Canada or Mexico on a map”
Can’t really remember any occasion when finding Canada or Mexico on a map has ever helped me. The pilot seems to know and thats enough for me
“…not that the US is so great at foreign language education either…”
I heard the use of spanish is improving rapidly
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