According to Mitch Albom – Korean kids are just like American kids 100 years ago. Who is Mitch Albom you ask? Well, he is the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven (read it and liked it) and a couple of other books. He also writes for the Detroit Free Press. But what does he know about Korean kids? Apparently he spent a week here talking to Korean High School kids and tells about his experiences in this article. For many of us who have been here for some time – I am sure that a lot of this sounds almost cliche.
It’s funny, because most of the kids here want to be American.
Not in the citizenship sense. They don’t want to join our army. They want to be American in speaking English, in gaining wealth and status, in rising to the top. One of the questions I was asked by media here was, “What do our children have to do to become global leaders?” That’s not a common question in the U.S. — not to a visiting writer, anyhow.
As if we all haven’t heard this:
There is an obsession with getting ahead here that begins with the classroom and permeates the adult workplace, where rigid hours and meager vacation days are the norm. The attitude mimics one you heard among American immigrants in the early 20th Century: “If you don’t do well in school, you won’t get to college, if you don’t get to college you won’t get a god job, and if you don’t get a good job, you’ll be a loser.”
Well, maybe we haven’t. Despite Pres. Obama’s assurances last year that “If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America,” Mr. Albom is far from convinced.
How are American kids going to copy that? We’re not disciplined enough, we’re not hungry enough, and, most importantly, either parents don’t say it enough, or if they do, kids ignore them.
This article in Korea Times (September 7, 2010) seems to support him. It claims that more and more foreigners are coming to study in Korea while the number of foreigners studying in the States is decreasing.
“However, Korea had the highest rate of increase of foreign students from 2000 to 2008,” the report said.
Korea and New Zealand attracted more international students in that period, while overseas students in major countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom fell.
He did note “that studies show that while Korean kids do amazingly well on certain standardized tests, those who come to America for college often drop out, unaccustomed the approach we take.” Perhaps it is all that sleep they get in the United States as opposed to Korea where students suffer from sleep deprivation – see Chosun Ilbo (in Korean) – (HT KoreaBeat).
{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
Mitch Albom is a best selling author who does tend to say things that seem either oddly familiar , as if he may have read them somewhere, or actually false. He probably read up on Korea and then met with students who he quotes as saying what he knew already. But he writes well.
If I’m born in Korea I’m Korean
Beyond that being Korean is meaningless.
“However, Korea had the highest rate of increase of foreign students from 2000 to 2008,” the report said.
“Korea and New Zealand attracted more international students in that period, while overseas students in major countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom fell.”
Numbers, please! If enrollment of foreign students in Korea in 2008 was 496 and it increased to 700 in 2009, the increase is a fantastic 40%. If foreign enrollent in the US in 2008 was 3,978,896 and in 2009 it dropped to 3,679,835, the rate decreased by a few percentage points. But are we talking about the same thing here?
Whoa George, be careful w/ questions like that. It’ll f**k up the gibbun.
“And as most educators will tell you, family is where future school performance begins.”
That sentence is the sole exception in an article written with the most hysterically superficial understanding of Korean education. Maybe more than a week in Korea would put Mitch in a better spot to write on the subject. Come to think of it, I wish I was famous enough to go places for a week and be paid to write about what I think, however ill informed it may be.
이명박’s response to Obama as the latter searched for a conversation piece and whipped out ol’ trusty, “You education system is great” remark recently? “Mr. President, I wish I could say that was true, but you don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
WOW. I was shocked to see this article today.
I am from Detroit and proposed almost the same exact article to Mitch and his editor via email about 14 months ago.
I reread the email I sent both of them – my email was very similar to what he wrote though a few of the things he wrote in his article where definately his own.
Wow, who can spot the hasty generalization?
Hint: he probably can’t speak Korean.
I’d be interested to see an article where a journalist talks to American high school students and get’s their opinions. Everybody is always so quick to dismiss them that I wonder if anyone has ever actually gotten their opinion on the matter. Everybody has been whinging about American high school students, and failing to recognize that these people have been the country’s greatest assets in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past ten years. America will have a great generation of young people in the next few years.
I would like to go on record as saying that Mitch Albom is one of the worst writers I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading, and I believe he is an idiot. This was my opinion of him prior to reading this article, and the article has done nothing to dissuade me.
Albom sucked (sucks?–no idea what he does now) as a sportswriter at the Freep. He was one of the first to adopt the short-sentence breezy style which probably gets more readers but is as shallow as a micron-thick lake. In other words: more feelings, fewer facts and analysis.
Except that military service doesn’t capture more than about 175,000 young people each year (initial accessions), whereas about 2.9 million graduate from high school — meaning that only up to 6% of America’s youth ever end up serving. (It’s actually a lower percentage because many initial enlistees are older — the Marines have the lowest top age for enlistments, and theirs is 28. The Army takes guys up to age 42.) Not all of them are as awesome as I was.
I don’t know about the US, but the drop in foreign students in the UK is probably due to the new visa restrictions.
“meaning that only up to 6% of America’s youth ever end up serving.”
You don’t even need that many people to provide solid leadership, you only need about 1-2 percent of the population.
The kids in high school today have an advantage that I didn’t have, and that is that shit is pretty fucked up these days. Now that might not sound very hopeful, but I think that, that is a good motivation to stop chasing the so called “American Dream,” and to try to focus on what needs to be done.
A major difference between the American and Korean education systems is that Americans entering college still have the freedom to study whatever they want. Sure an SAT or ACT score might limit your choices schools, but once you enroll you can pick pretty much any major you want. In Korea majors are often forced on students by their advisers based on the scores of their college entrance exam.
#5, so spot on.
What were America’s youth like 100 years ago anyways? Did most even finish school back then?
Mitch Albom wasn’t a great sportswriter, but he wasn’t horrible. His writing style was gratingly obvious, but he did have a nice eye for detail, and his Detroit Free Press columns were usually a fun, breezy read. I still can’t quite believe how mega-popular he became with “Tuesdays With Morrie”–a tidy package of trite, obvious “life lessons” and bald sentimentality. Spend more time with your family. Don’t worry so much about material things. etc. etc. Wow, thanks Mitch!!
With this educational policy / social criticism stuff, he’s in WAY over his head.
3gyupsal — This presumes that every servicemember is going to be a fantastic leader. That you think such is possible tells me you have no personal familiarity with military service.
I was wrong about which branch has the lowest age for initial enlisted accessions. It’s the Coast Guard, where the top age is 27. Army’s still 42. And with up to four years’ credit for past military service, ol’ Uncle B — who’s only 41 — could still sign up as a Specialist sometime in the next five years.
You are correct, I don’t have much familiarity with the service, but I don’t see how I presume that every service member is going to be a fantastic leader. You shouldn’t put words in other people’s mouths.
“They don’t make comedies here where the 10-year-old is the brilliant family member and Mom and Dad are bumbling knuckleheads.”
But they at least DRAW the Simpsons.
American students who think they have the freedom to study whatever they want are in for a rude awakening in this economy — which is the same reason why Korean guidance counselors advise students to go for high-stability majors if their scores allow. U.S. will be the same way pretty soon.
@20
Terrific.
@ # 20,
Yeah, the days of majoring in Basket Weaving and getting a mortgage banker’s (or broker’s) job out of college are over.
Below post on American education by James Kwak of Baseline Scenario I thought was very interesting. I just wish he wrote more about it —
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/09/06/why-the-education-gap/
Sorry… I meant Underwater Basket Weaving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving
Neff,
It’s an interesting point that a lot of Koreans come to the U.S. to study. I read that America enjoys a $5 billion trade surplus with Korea in terms of higher education.
I also disagree with Albom’s assertion that the Korean education system does not prepare Korean kids for doing well in U.S. colleges. I think in majority of cases it not that they are intellectually ready, but in that they are suddenly thrust in a situation where they are away from friends and family and the larger Korean society and it’s difficult for them to handle all that sudden freedom.
Call me skeptical, but I don’t know how having people who know how to sniff out IEDs on roadsides or chasing haji around the streets of non-Green zone Baghdad is going to help such youth compete against comparable youth in India and/or China who were doing Calculus Integrals in 9th grade?
100 years ago. Let’s see 2010 – 100 = 1910.
In 1910 less than 20% of American 15 – 18 years olds were enrolled in a high school; less than 10% of all American 18 year-olds graduated.
School enrollment of children was also depressed by employment of the children in the textile industry.
Agreed. Albom’s assertion presumes that the majority of yuhaksaeng are enolling in U.S. universities as undergrads. Of course, this is ridiculous and is like focusing on the scores of U.S. Special Olympians™ to make a generalization about the performance of all American Olympians. (It also shows that Albom hasn’t been on a U.S. college campus for several decades.)
The fact is that the majority of Korean yuhaksaeng enrolled in U.S. college programs are graduate and postgraduate students, the majority of whom are not only in their 30′s-40′s and married in many cases, but are usually more academically prepared to study and succeed in the U.S. than their American counterparts.
(A combination of a rigorous Korean high school courseload heavy on quantitatives and memorization, combined with a rat-race Korean undergraduate experience, along with 24 months of seonbae-inspired flagellation and personal introspection in the ROK military and the typical 2-5 years of professional grunt experience at Korea, Inc. converge to make the typical Korean yuhak MBA or Ph.D. candidate or research fellow more than hungry to succeed.)
It is well documented that Korean students struggle at the best American colleges, more so than other foreign students like Chinese or Indians.
(I assume the study this article cites refers more to undergrads than grads.)
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/10/12/2009101200929.html
In my humble opinion, a big reason why Korean students don’t do well at foreign schools is because Korean schools, at all levels, do a very poor job teaching citation. At many non-Korean universities, if you hand in an essay once without the proper citation (this is especially true at higher levels), you are kicked out for plagiarism.
@16:
Roger that Carr. Comparing the mostly all-draftee citizen soldier of the “Greatest Generation” with our current generation of all-volunteer professional soldiers of the ‘thug generation’ or what I call the ‘Columbine Generation’ — (see:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers) — is WAY off base. (Besides the fact that they wore the same uniform, these two generations have little in common.)
The Greatest Generation became great, not b/c of their military service per se, but b/c of what they did after their service — they overcame the shellshock, the combat fatigue, the bitterness, the survivor’s guilt, the sense of loss (a.k.a. “PTSD”), by reclaiming their lives, by going to school, by starting families, by being successfull, by raising the next generation, etc.
And they didn’t quit either. They didn’t whinge and whine; they didn’t seek an early retirement at the age of 22, they didn’t camp out at a homeless shelter or go to sleep at high noon in city parks wearing grungy BDUs, and they didn’t try to scam the U.S. taxpayer with false claims of 100% combat disability. They put the uniform and the medals away, got their game back on and didn’t stop until their ticker gave out. The fact that they overcame and succeeded in their civilian lives — despite their military service and war wounds — is what made the Greatest Generation great.
On the other hand, guess who was in my basic training and infantry school cycle at Fort Benning at exactly the same time I was there in the summer of 1988?
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Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. (not kidding either.)
@30:
The whole idea of using footnotes is a relatively new concept for Koreans as a whole — not surprising for a nation that historically prides itself on creating knock-offs, counterfeits & pirated content galore — so give ‘em a break, they’re still learning. Also, the concept of citing and the practice of footnoting traditionally as of late, wasn’t even taught to Korean students unless they’re studying at the graduate level or at a SKY institution, so don’t blame the teachers — it’s just one of those things that literally didn’t even exist in Korea until quite recently when the first generation of yuhaksaeng educated in the States during the 1970′s, started returning to Korea as newly minted Ph.D’s, struggling at change the system, first as lowly assistant professors, and now, having left their academic imprimateur on the current generation, on the way to retiring after having left an administrative and educational legacy, hopefully for the better, at Korea’s best universities.
If you can survive a depression (as in a real economic malaise, not this weak bs, so called “Great” recession) then you can survive a war and do quite well afterwards.
8675309,
Reminds me of what Gunnery Sergeant Hartman said in Full Metal Jacket:
This “greatest generation” stuff makes me retch. After WWII, the rest of the world was in pieces., plus our economy was all steroided up from 5 or 6 years or gigantic deficit spending. Anybody who had any money in the world was buying shit from us. And those that didn’t have money, we lent them the money to do so. You had to be functionally retarded not to be a successful American in the late 40s and 50s.
feld_dog,
I will say this though. WWII gave the U.S. a very skilled workforce. You are talking about millions of young men who just went through a tightly regimented and disciplined military system that was ideal for the factory floor and a significant percentage of those young men took advantage of the GI bill to get a college education.
Thanks wk936, that was a great reminder of a classic. For many years, I got my best quotes from FMJ — although basic at Ft. Benning was more like Biloxi Blues meets the first and last act of Platoon instead of FMJ. (Obviously, no one can top Lee Ermey though when it comes to Drill Sergeant/Instructor lines, but here is a sample of a typical “conversation” I had with one of my drill sergeants at Ft. Benning:
The Cast…
Me: A lowly PFC in his sixth week of 13 weeks of Army basic & infantry school in the middle of the hottest summer Georgia has experienced in 25 years…
Drill Sgt. Chris Doyle: An airborne/air assault/expert infantryman E-6 career NCO with 10+ years in the Regular Army having served most recently with the Third Infantry Regiment (Old Guard) at Arlington, the 101st Airborne Division, and various infantry units in Germany who up to that point in time, had used every Asian racial ephiteth in existence when addressing me, while harrassing me non-stop for six straight weeks before the following summons…
Setting: Me, standing in front of Drill Sergeant Doyle’s desk, having been summoned to his office in the barracks, after dinner:
Drill Sgt. Doyle: “Private, you’ve had some college right?”
Me (the lowly PFC): (shaking in my boots, standing drenched with sweat in my P.T. uniform at full parade rest…) “Yes drill sergeant, just two years though.”
Drill Sgt. Doyle: (Reclining in an office chair behind his desk with boots propped up on the desk.) “OK then, now answer me this. How is it that seven astronauts get blown up in the Space Shuttle Challenger back in ’86 and the whole nation turns out in yellow ribbons and memorials from coast to coast to remember them and the president himself turning out to greet their families, whereas when I was serving with the 101st Airborne Division a year before, a whole plane load of our best NCO’s and officers goes down in Gander, Newfoundland after six months of UN peacekeeping duty on the Sinai, and not one g*d*mned yellow ribbon or memorial is offered by anyone in this country, and not one politician turns up when we recovered their bodies from the wreck and returned them to the U.S.?”
Me: (Speaking slowly and nervously…) “Umm, Drill Sergeant, I think that’s b/c the Challenger crew were considered public figures b/c they received a lot of publicity and attention before the flight — so they were kind of celebrities — whereas the soldiers from the 101st that went down on that chartered flight in Gander were neither public figures nor celebrities.”
Drill Sergeant Doyle: (Now with arms folded acrossed his chest and a perplexed look on his face…) “I don’t get it private, both the Space Shuttle astronauts and 101st Airborne paratroopers are serving the same government, serving the country — albeit in different ways — so doesn’t that make those soldiers public figures just like the Challenger crew?”
Me: (Still nervous as hell, sweating profusely and speaking cautiously and slowly…) “Umm, drill sergeant, as far as I know, public figures are individuals that receive publicity, just like “celebrities”. Soldiers and military personnel, on the other hand, are more like public servants, I think. And I think most Americans had no idea who those soldiers were before the accident, nor did they know that that they were even in the Sinai or coming home for that matter.”
DS Doyle: (Still shaking his head with a dissatisfied and perplexed look…) “Well I happened to have lost a lot of good friends in that plane crash, and I still think we were shorted by the public.”
Me: (Beads of sweat still rolling off my forehead while standing at parade rest…) “Yes Drill Sergeant. Is there anything else?”
DS Doyle: (Suddenly straighten himself in his chair…) “As you were private. Now get the f*ck out of here!!!”
(So much for Hollywood!)
“I will say this though. WWII gave the U.S. a very skilled workforce. You are talking about millions of young men who just went through a tightly regimented and disciplined military system that was ideal for the factory floor”
Let me suggest an amendment for you, “WWII gave the US a very skilled workforce. You are talking about millions of young women who went through a tightly regimented and disciplined factory system that was ideal for the …you guess the rest….”
WK–
I agree re: WWII creating a disciplined factory-ready workforce, plus the GI bill giving a huge (and very egalitarian) boost to vets. But you could put the entire U.S. 2010 population through 5 years of boot camp and it wouldn’t mean squat because there are no factory jobs left. You could make college education free for EVERYONE and it wouldn’t matter because China and India are producing engineers willing to work for 1/10 of what we make.
It was the general macroeconomic conditions that made the “greatest generation” great.
Are Americans fatter, lazier, stupider, more spoiled, and more self-entitled than 50 years ago? Of course. No argument there. But if we were all to suddenly, magically “toughen up” and emulate our grandfathers, it really wouldn’t make a whole lotta difference. I think we could have manged the inevitable decline of our empire more wisely and with more foresight over the past 20 years or so, but the decline itself was inevitable.
Wrong. In 1946, where was the competition? England: Still in recovery. Germany: Down for the count. Japan: Starving to death. The rest of Europe: in shambles and still rebuilding, meaning America was luckiest nation in the world and head honcho by default.
If we used your line of thinking that it was just “macroeconomic conditions that made the ‘greatest generation’ great,” then the greatest generation is a misnomer as thhey should’ve been called the Luckiest Generation. That said, I don’t think the greatest generation would willingly accept that title without a fight.
I don’t think that our grandfathers were any “tougher” than the current generation is today. In fact, by all measures and with all the memberships in Gold’s Gym™ and Bally’s™ Fitness Centers nationwide combined, I think the current generation is just as “tough” as any generation to date.
What made the WW2 generation a legacy in and of itself, however, is that in spite of overwhelming odds and difficulties, they never gave up, and I’ll have to agree with wk936 that hard-as-nails attitude was perhapsa result of having lived through the depression. You don’t necessarily have to be physically tough for that — you just need to have perseverance, patience and a never quit attitude. That said, our current generation raised on instant gratification seems to lack these qualities in spades as they seem to be submitting to such defeatist rhetoric such as “the inevitable decline”, or “it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference,” etc.
100 years ago, 1910. This was when Korea got occupied by Japanese troops and have surrendered their government to Japan. Korean kids probably still wore traditional attire and went to confucian school at that moment. Korea was still in 17th (era) century back in 100 years ago. While American kids were living in free country with 20th (era) century. We’re comparing what Tibetan kids today with Japanese kids, big difference. This was what Korean kids back in 100 years ago.
Actually, most Americans (especially the Tea Partiers) are NOT accepting the rhetoric of “inevitable decline” — they are still chanting “Amurica #1″, apparently believing that having 89 kinds of potato chips to choose from at the supermarket makes a nation #1. For people to willfully ignore the rapidly growing competition for scarce global resources, our massive indebtedness, our health care and education problems, not to mention looming environmental calamity–for these people to not accept that a large majority of Americans will soon have to accept a living standard at least somewhat lower than that of our parents–it’s just whistling past the graveyard. It’s an open question how much our blank culture of instant gratification is responsible for this situation. But it’s obvious that our softness and stupidity is standing in the way of clearly understading our national dilemma, and blocking level-headed articulation of a way to move forward as a poorer, humbler, less-powerful nation without total social breakdown and chaos–or war.
Who benefited from the wealth generated after WW2? Who benefits from our short attention span, political divisiveness, and gadget craving? Who benefits from the current economic conditions? You need to find that group and ask them to get more pertinent information on this debate.
Something I’ve noticed reading all this is that some commenters seem to think they are not part of the short attention span theater we live in these days and are viewing the situation from outside, or even above. I call bullshit.
I get the feeling that Korean students do poorly in undergrad programs overseas due to the fact the education system here peaks at the end of high school. You can pass an undergrad program in Korea with perfect attendance alone, (Scary but true). After the grueling high school years many Koreans use undergrad as a chance to enjoy life, finally out from under the pressure of hogwan hell, with the confidence that, especially if they are in a SKY university, they will find a good job after college. However, heading into an overseas college with this attitude will get them expelled before they have time to re-adjust.
feld_dog,
Plus… the U.S. didn’t have much competition in 1945. B-17s and B-29s wrecked the factories in Germany and Japan and China was in its Communist sanitorium (by 1950).
“100 years ago, 1910. This was when Korea got occupied by Japanese troops and have surrendered their government to Japan. Korean kids probably still wore traditional attire and went to confucian school at that moment. Korea was still in 17th (era) century back in 100 years ago. While American kids were living in free country with 20th (era) century. We’re comparing what Tibetan kids today with Japanese kids, big difference. This was what Korean kids back in 100 years ago.”
Um, nobody’s comparing Korean kids 100 years ago to anyone, in case you haven’t noticed. Considering that life expectancy back then was something like 24 I’m sure they had other worries.
^ That’s why you called yourself as Bum Suck. I don’t think you have understood my comment fully. You need to learn better English, may be because you have been living in Korea for too long.
I was simply making my comment on the article. Life expectancy in any countries with Tibetan condition would have been very low anyway. Just look at Afghanistan and Tibet right now, that was same reality for most Korean kids at that time. Australian aborigines life expectancy is also very low and yes we’re in 21sth century, looks like this is pretty much similar to American natives in North America too.
America is still in control of a large part of the world’s basic resources, especially food, and the value of basic resources is going to keep going up as global competition intensifies.
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