English villages, goose parents, the mass importation of recent college graduates from English speaking countries and now this.
It looks like Jeju will get government sponsorship to build an “education city” for 12 prestigious Western schools to set-up branch campuses. Called the Jeju Global Education City, it will be a 940 acre self-contained community within Seogwipo, where everyone — students, teachers, administrators, doctors, store clerks– will speak only English. The first school, North London Collegiate, broke ground for its campus this month.
According to the NYT article:
By inviting leading Western schools, the government is hoping to address one of the notorious stress points in South Korean society. Many parents want to send children abroad so they can learn English and avoid the crushing pressure and narrow focus of the Korean educational system. The number of South Korean students from elementary school through high school who go abroad for education increased to 27,350 in 2008 from 1,840 in 1999, according to government data.
[...]
“There is an expressed desire in Korea to seek the benefits of a ‘Western’ or ‘American’ approach to pre-collegiate education,” said Ted Hill, headmaster of the Chadwick School, whose Songdo campus has been deluged with applicants to fill the 30 percent of slots reserved for Korean students. The balance of the student body will be recruited from expatriate families living in South Korea and China.
Is it just me or is South Korea slowly [but deliberately] becoming Singapore?
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
I have no idea about the politics of regional development that might be behind this, but the choice of Jeju is brilliant. Any effort to attract top quality instructors and administrators from abroad (rather than your run-of-the-mill ESL type) will have to include keen attention to quality of life issues that would likely not be available in, say, Daegu or Daejon or Podunk, Chollanam-do.
Jeju is an incredibly inviting location and that alone will attract a lot of top talent that wouldn’t ordinarily consider a career in Korea. Like I said, just brilliant.
DLB
The true test will be whether the barber shop employees speak English.
Ummm…. which “barber shop” employees we talking about here?
hopefully not the Russian “barber shop” employees, we all know what language they will speak.
I always thought the best barbershops had multilingual staffs skilled in at least “English”, “French”, “Greek”, “Russian”, “German” as well as the universal grammar.
Not a bad idea. The location itself is conducive to reducing stress.
That’s truly hilarious, unless they are planning on keeping Koreans out.
Just you.
There’s a good discussion on Expats about this, where the mood seems considerably less optimistic. My question is who really – really – is going to be running these schools? They’re not seriously going to have headmasters from England calling the shots, are they? They’re not seriously going to have teachers from England who’ve been teaching their subjects for 10 or 20 years, are they? No, they’re going to have a bunch of young backpackers being directed by a bunch of ajeoshis who got the job because they know someone or their family had money, but their money and connections weren’t quite good enough to get them where they wanted on the mainland.
I’m guessing this place is going to turn out to be about as successful as Paju English Village (which already has all the facilities you’d need for an international school) with only the construction companies benefiting.
@#9
From my discussions with JDC staff members, the foreign schools that open in the Jeju English Town (NLCS, St. Albans) will run their schools as they see fit. I’m sure they won’t be sending their best teachers from England or the US, but they know it’s in their best interest to hire capable teachers and not the loser hagwon types. I don’t think they’ll chance ruining their excellent reputations. I’m not so sure about the Korean run schools though.
As far as becoming another Paju, that shouldn’t be the case. Paju was basically set up as an english camp. Kids would attend anywhere from a week to a month during school vacation with very limited exposure to english. However, all the schools in Jeju English Town (including the Korean run ones) will be run year round just as any other international school already operating in Korea (+ a few cool bennies). But as someone alluded to earlier, the chances of the whole town being run in English are none to slimmer than none. Still, it should be miles above Paju.
What I can’t get my head around is the fees. 17mil. for the Korean run school and 27mil. won for North London, all while being allowed to use all facilities free of charge, courtesy of the Korean government. Greedy bastards.
“the foreign schools that open in the Jeju English Town (NLCS, St. Albans) will run their schools as they see fit.”
No they won’t, especially if they have a limited role in the student selection process and Koreans on their staff. If they have Koreans in their administration they’re really going to be looking at some huge fuck-ups. But then a staff of 30 whities who’ve never been to Korea before are going to have plenty of fuck-ups on their hands all on their own.
Yu Bum Suk – “No they won’t, especially if they have a limited role in the student selection process and Koreans on their staff. If they have Koreans in their administration they’re really going to be looking at some huge fuck-ups. But then a staff of 30 whities who’ve never been to Korea before are going to have plenty of fuck-ups on their hands all on their own.”
Probably true, but the “whitey fuck-ups” will be due to not knowing the culture and what it entails, while the “Korean fuck-ups” will be due to the inate inability of organisation. The whitey fuck -ups would be corrected with time. The other scenario is pretty much hopeless.
I don’t know what you know or how you got your info about how NLCS will be run (though I’m genuinely interested) but I can only go by conversations I’ve had with JDC English Town officials. And they’ve told me that at least with the foreign schools all administrative decisions (to include curriculum, staffing, and school policies) will be made by their own headquarters.
Now, I haven’t talked to anyone with NLCS and I haven’t seen their contract with JDC, nor can I say with a 100% degree of certainty that JDC isn’t just blowing smoke up my ass, but I don’t see any reason to doubt them…. yet. If you have any info, I’d greatly appreciate it.
And as far as Korean staff goes, I highly doubt that a reputable school such as NLCS would hire any Koreans unless they were 1) fluent in English (bi-lingual), and 2) qualified for the job.
“but I don’t see any reason to doubt them”
Beyond the fact that every single other experiment to create an authentic English immersion environment for children in Korea has failed?
I caught Yujin playing with her phone in class. She told me that she had to contact her mother about something very important and urgent. However, when I checked her phone’s message history, it turned out she had been replying to a text from a friend.
I caught Minju playing with her phone in class. She told me that she had to contact her mother about something very important and urgent. However, when I checked her phone’s message history, it turned out she had been replying to a text from a friend.
I caught Suhui playing with her phone in class. She told me that she had to contact her mother about something very important and urgent. However, when I checked her phone’s message history, it turned out she had been replying to a text from a friend.
I caught Boram playing with her phone in class. She told me that she had to contact her mother about something very important and urgent. However, when I checked her phone’s message history, it turned out she had been replying to a text from a friend.
I just caught Yujin playing with her phone in class for the second time. She told me that she had to contact her mother about something very important and urgent. But I don’t see any reason to doubt her. Or Mr Kim about the JDC.
@ Yu Bum Suk
Dude, you’ve gone fuckin bonkers.
Not as bonkers as anyone who thinks that the government is actually going to let a bunch of compotent foreign educators come in and make good money by providing any Korean children and parents in Korea who want it with a better quality alternative to the state schooling system.
I was just thinking, my brother-in-law is an elementry teacher in Canada whose private school is tracking him for an administration position. He’s won a few awards and from what I can tell is probably an excellent teacher. If his school were to get into this project he’s just the type of guy who might consider accepting a job to be a VP and live in another country for a few years. And I can just imagine what he’d think of trying to run a school in Korea.
“Who’s that guy talking on the school PA system and what the hell is saying? I thought this place was supposed to be all in English. And what are those delivery guys doing here dropping off all those textbooks? I never ordered them. Why are they in Korean? And Miss Lee, what happened with the meeting I asked you to arrange with the district superindendent? I really have to talk to him about some things. Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to bow to me. And what’s all that commotion out in the hall? Holy Fuck! Mrs Park’s making her students kneel on the floor and hitting them with a ruler! And what was that? Oh yes, Mr Cho, nice to meet you. We met two weeks ago, remember? And what’s that on his breath? Is that mouthwash or alcohol? He’s not drunk at nine in the morning, is he? And why is that foreign guy who’s lived in Korea for five years just sitting in the corner laughing at everything that happens here? Shit, there’s that guy on the PA again – what the hell’s going on? Miss Lee, did you call the district superindentend. Don’t keep bowing and apologising to me, just do it please. Gosh those kids outside the window are being noisy. Why did they come here to speak English at school when all they do is scream in Korean? Crap, this place is nuts. Maybe my brother-in-law can give me some advice”
[Call's b-i-l on the mainland]
“Bro, you are not going to BELIEVE this place, blah blah blah blah blah…”
“Meh, sounds pretty normal to me”.
You do realize that there are international schools already operating in Korea, don’t you? And that one of the main reasons for constructing this town is to lessen the outflow of Korean money to western nations by providing Koreans this home soil alternative to sending their kids to foreign countries where they spend a significant amount on not only education but on things such as lodging, food, entertainment, etc.
So, yes, while these schools in the Jeju English Town may make a sizable sum here, it’ll be nothing compared to what Koreans spend sending their kids abroad.
And as I stated before, if you have any specific knowledge regarding the Jeju English Town or NLCS or St. Albans, I’d be very interested in hearing it. All this other stuff is of no significance to me.
Yes, I do realise that there are already international schools in Korea, which aren’t supposed to be for Korean nationals although plenty of Korean kids manage to get into them anyways. I also know that such schools have a lot of teachers working for them who wouldn’t be considered qualified by international schools in other countries (Either MH or KB had an article on this a while back). However these Jeju schools are supposed to be for 100% Korean nationals where they’re supposedly going to speak English all the time. No they’re not. They’re supposed to give kids the same benefit they’d get from being in an English speaking country. No they won’t. And that’s assuming that the government actually gives the foreigners a free hand to run their schools (which I’m pretty sure they won’t).
Then there’s the little matter that with a project this large and so many money-grubbing, moral-less, self-serving businessmen posing as educators in this country you can be sure that at least some money (or maybe a grand sum of money) is going to get syphoned out of it. And sooner or later a foreign administrator, who’s not a businessman, is going to find out about it. Then what’s going to happen, especially if it directly affects his school? What’s going to happen when the school back in England finds out about it?
I’d dearly love for foreign educators to be able to run schools in Korea where they controlled every aspect of it. But that’s about as likely to happen as KJI announcing ‘Sorry, I was wrong and we should let Dae Han Min Guk come and take us over’.
I get the impression that some commentators have never actually taught in western schools. I taught for 15 years in High Schools in London and South East England and they were grim. Anti-intellectualism was rampant, standards were poor and teachers under immense stress from both school bureaucracy and student misbehaviour. My first day in school, as a qualified teacher, a student spat at me; the managements’ response was to ask to see my planner.
There are a number of excellent blog sites by disillusioned teachers, eg: ‘Frank Chalk’ – http://frankchalk.blogspot.com/
and: ‘Education Meltdown’ – http://ne5566mo.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/1-so-you-want-to-be-a-teacher-fool/ ).
In most schools I’ve taught, management educators have been the problem as they are piggy in the the middle between parents and political policy.
Most western managers would: 1) ban corporal punishments, 2)introduce Mickey Mouse courses like basketball studies and give them a parity with academic subjects like maths – in order to increase uptake, 3) scrap academic prize giving and promote sport awards, 4)moralise and peversify skinship, 5) extend politically correct rights to all students while not expecting anything in return, 6) introduce course work wherever possible, 7) continue forcing kids to do SATs and other tests even though they serve no didactic purpose,
use student tests to judge teachers, 9) attribute student failure to bad teaching before attributing it to bad parenting, management or student attitude, 10) introduce an awareness that a number of staff are bad teachers so that they can be used as a scapegoat for future managerial failures, 11) introduce a range of exams which will ensure that no students fail – even when they are lazy and clearly incompetent 12) and basically facilitate the general dumbing down of culture by choosing topics kids like rather than ones valued by society. 13) Oh, and let’s not forget students need to interview all potential staff!
I’d hate to be a Korean student, but with teachers being knifed in British schools, teachers assaulted by parents and students, and seeing what is clearly academic failure in so many schools being re-invented as success, at least Korean kids are generally decent, motivated, and among the most literate in the world. (Yes, I know they lack creativity!)
In 2005 and 2006, the annual conference of the British Professional Association of Teachers made proposals to ban both ‘clever’ and ‘failure’ from teachers’ vocabulary. They argued ‘deferred success’ should replace ‘failure’ and that labeling a child ‘clever’ increased their chances of being bullied and alienated. Yea, Korea is not perfect but I can almost guarantee that allowing western educators to run Korea schools would be a guaranteed failure. In the very words of the PAT, ‘it’s not cool to be clever’ in Britain or the USA, and it is the educators, managers, politicians and dumb arsed celebrities that kids in British schools now study and aspire to be like, who have helped create this situation. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/aug/04/schools.education)
That Korean parents want to send their kids to the UK so they can learn English is all very well and good if their kids are guaranteed to get into a decent school but should they fail this they are in for a shock. GCSE pass rates in my local town this week: Colchester Royal Grammar and Colchester Girls High School, both selective schools (allowed to cream off the top 5%), achieved 100% pass rate at 5 GCSE passes a-c grade (including maths and English), both schools are in the top ten best consistent performers in the UK. Meanwhile the 5 schools in which I have taught ‘achieved’ pass rates of: 20%, 49%, 13%, 19%, 40%. Naturally, the management in the schools will insist this is a success. But help is on the way, the OFSTED Chief Inspector for Schools, Zenna Atkins, today announced that private companies should be able to run schools. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7969540/Allow-private-firms-to-run-schools-says-Ofsted-chief.html)
@ Yu Bum Suk
This article [Link] seems to verify all that I’ve been told by JDC in regards to how and by whom NLCS will be administered.
If you have any PROOF to support your claims, I’m all ears.
Bathhouse, very interesting read. Today I was feeling a bit frustrated because my third-years were taking a long time to settle down, plus I think I heard one of them use the ㅆ-word when they were coming in. Then I remembered your post which I had just read. My kids are bloody angels compared to the ones you had to teach. Plus I don’t have to deal with administrators whose main goal seems to be to hamstring teachers.
Mechyota, I’m thinking of working at this hagwon in Daegu called Wonderland Academy. Everyone keeps telling me it’s going to be a real crap job, but they don’t have any proof. They need two teachers – are you interested?
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