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Re: [xmca] Korean Education
First of all, the debate here in Korea is really about PRIVATE education, specifically cram schools. These are not well regulated, and they absorb increasingly large amounts of disposible income. So even our unpleasant right wing government, which funnels a lot of public money into subsidizing these cram schools, has to respond to the correct perception that the schools are cheating parents and abusing kids.
Secondly, there is no serious evidence that I have seen which suggests to me that Korean education turns out "cookie cutter" kids any more than any other system, and a lot of evidence suggests exactly the opposite (e.g. Korea took first place in creative problem solving in the 2006 PISA investigations;). My own research found MUCH less IRF style "recitation" in Korean classroom discourse than has been reported in American academic discourse.
Jonathan Tudge's book "The Everyday Life of Children" found that Korean three year olds got substantially MORE playtime than any of the other kids he examined. His book is not comparative, precisely because, as he notes, the qualitative differences of kids's experiences make any such direct comparisons impossible. For example, he notices that although kids in Suwon families get a lot more playtime than other kids in his study, that play tends to be of an "academic" nature. So for example, the kids don't just play, they play with geometric blocks, which they learn to name at an early age, and they don't just draw, but learn to draw with Hanggeul.
It seems to me that there is an unproven assumption in a lot of discussion of Korean education that many long hours spent in school (as opposed to, say, watching television, or doing on line gaming, or joining a street gang) is necessarily abusive and even anti-educational. I see this questionable assumption in a lot of educational research, both in the idea that classroom life is somehow NOT real life for the child, and in the idea that the main goal of education is to be efficient so that we can get on with other more important things. Suppose there just isn't anything which is any more important?
I suppose that in the final analysis, there will be something more important: the ability of children to grow up and exercise their critical facilities in extremis. Now here too I think we have something to be proud of. The Korean government, in addition to trying to (somewhat reluctantly and belatedly) policing the cram schools, has been more enthusiastically trying to prevent middle and high school kids from attending candlelight vigils against, inter alia, the callous manslaughter of two middle school kids by an American tank on a country road and the importation of American beef.
Most recently the protests have been in favor of an across the board reduction of all tuition fees by at least fitty percent (including tuition fees demanded by private universities). Most universities have had to concede on this, at least temporarily, but the students have rejected attempts to turn the tuition reductions into "special grants" and demanded that they be made permanent. Ttomorrow night, the protests will be directed against the huge gap between loan interest rates and interest paid on savings deposits by kids' parents.
Yes, the "Occupy Wall Street" protests have now spread to Youido, in downtown Seoul (which is also the seat of government as well as our Wall Street). But there is a difference. Where American police attack protestors with impunity and obvious relish, Korean police are much more circumspect: these students and workers have, three times within living memory, demolished a military dictatorship with their bare hands. Is this really how cookie cutter kids behave?
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
--- On Wed, 10/12/11, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Korean Education
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 2:03 PM
Carol
A great point that needed clarification. I was responding to the term
"creativity" and long hours of cramming in the math & sciences in contrast
to "liberal arts". Policy makers in China are reflecting on directions to
take to develop the liberal arts. [as they understand this term]
Larry
On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>wrote:
> Larry,
> What is a "great learning space"?
>
> Let me tell you, they will not be able to replicate Oxford or Cambridge or
> Edinburgh as the cultures are understated and cannot even be expalined by
> the natives. Did you know that in Sept 2010 Cambridge admitted only one
> student of colour? Racism rules. Not in Scotland, where I was, but still
> you have to penetrate the culture.
>
> And Harvard with 10 000 students with 3,000 with perfect SAT scores,
> wanting
> to get in to first year, what does that tell you?? That would drive the
> Korean back into their night schools immediately.
>
> Carol
>
> On 12 October 2011 15:20, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > China has the goal to create 2 of the "best" universities in the world.
> > They are going to America's and Great Britain's "top" universities to
> study
> > their "Liberal art" disciplines [not engineering or science] They
> recognize
> > it is the liberal arts not the classical sciences that "generate" great
> > learning spaces
> > I wonder if Al Andalus and its libraries emphasized "sciences or liberal
> > arts?
> >
> > Larry
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Michael Glassman <MGlassman@ehe.osu.edu
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Carol,
> > >
> > > I have some Korean students and sometimes we talk about. the
> educational
> > > system There seems to be at least some type of battle raging in Korean
> > > education circles over all of this. The trouble with what is happening
> > is
> > > that the system is producing cookie cutter students and there is little
> > > emphasis, or even a fear of creativity. I think Korea just
> dramatically
> > > changed its cthat ollege entrance exame format because of this so that
> > it
> > > is based less on a standardized test model and much more on written
> > essays.
> > > Also I believe it used to be that you could only apply to one or two
> > > colleges so that application process was very high stakes and nerve
> > wracking
> > > - but now you can apply to multiple colleges. I have heard the same
> > thing
> > > in China discussing the education process, they are worried the system
> is
> > > teaching students how to take tests and not to think.
> > >
> > > We here in the United States seem to be moving in the oppositie
> > directions
> > > (except of course at very expensive private schools). We are working
> > more
> > > and more to take creativity and independent thinking out of the
> education
> > > process, especially for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
> You
> > > are right I think, KIPP is an attempt to institute the type of
> intensely
> > > focused education that some in Asian countries are trying to escape,
> > > complete with the emphasis on long hours of rote learning. There have
> > been
> > > limited studies of KIPP even on success in this, usually at only one or
> > two
> > > KIPP schools - chosen by KIPP. I have no idea why there haven't been
> > more
> > > comprehensive studies. But even the studies that are done are not
> > > longitudinal - meaning we don't know if there is a lasting effect on
> > > learning based self-efficacies (why are there no studied measuring
> > > self-efficacy when that is what KIPP is claiming it accomplishes?).
> The
> > > program seems to work for a certain type of student for a particular
> > amount
> > > of time, but as the Korean example suggests, what are we losing?
> > >
> > > Michael
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > >
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Carol Macdonald
> > > Sent: Wed 10/12/2011 12:55 AM
> > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > Subject: [xmca] Korean Education
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Did anyone see the article in the Time magazine about the Korean
> > > school educational obsession with studying, and the "learning police"
> > who
> > > have to check that night schools don't go over 10:00p.m? And students
> > sleep
> > > in class during the day. Compare that with the *equally high
> > > performance*of Finnish children who have 5 hours of school, one hour
> > > of homework, and
> > > only 13% having remedial lessons.
> > > What does that tell us about the optimum conditions for school
> learning?
> > > (National obsessions aside.)
> > > Carol
> > >
> > > PS The KIPP schools approximate the Korean model--what there?
> > >
> > > --
> > > Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate
> > > themselves.
> > > Ernest Dimnet<
> > > http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/ernestdimn404995.html>
> > >
> > >
> > > *Visiting Lecturer
> > > Wits School of Education
> > > Research Fellow*
> > > *Linguistics Dept: Unisa
> > > *
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>
>
>
> --
> Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate
> themselves.
> Ernest Dimnet<
> http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/ernestdimn404995.html>
>
>
> *Visiting Lecturer
> Wits School of Education
> Research Fellow*
> *Linguistics Dept: Unisa
> *
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
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