Interesting look at South Korean schools

[UglyCasanova]

Link

It seems to be the opposite end of the spectrum compared to US schools which has both pros and cons. I think the US definitely needs to rethink its obsession with sports in schools and start caring about actually educating our children again, but in the case of South Korea it looks like the price of high test scores may be too high (although how high is too high I guess would be a relativistic bar to set depending on the individual and society). What is the point of rote memorization and school essentially until 10 pm if it turns your brain into pudding and makes you unhappy with life.

It would be interesting to hear from any current or former students from South Korea if we have any on here.

 

[Maximilian]

Isnt there some kind of engineering principle that goes like "theres always a tradeoff"? Applies to many other areas of life as well.

 

[Imp]

South Korean way is essentially the Chinese way. I was brought up to put grades above all else. What a god damn waste of my life. It's twice as bad when you realize what a load of shit it is.

 

[lupi]

Never went to a school that had sports class during the teaching hours, so you'll have to explain this "obsession".

 

[Slew Foot]

Pretty much most Asian countries are like that. Thats why the Asian kids always kick the US ass in math and science tests. American kids like to think they're "more creative" though

 

[UglyCasanova]

Never went to a school that had sports class during the teaching hours, so you'll have to explain this "obsession".

Not sure how it is across the rest of the country, but basically in high school here if you aren't in honors/AP/gifted then you are in a sports class. The teachers don't take the classes seriously, the students don't take the classes seriously, and the parents don't take the classes seriously. Everything revolves around football, basketball, and baseball.

 

[Eug]

Agreed. This North American obsession with sports in school is frankly just stupid IMO.

There was a great Paul Mertin TV episode about this in the US. He showed the hooplah surrounding a football game. Parades. Sold out arena. Lots and lots of pomp and celebration. The whole town out in force.

It was a frickin' high school football game.

---

BTW, it may have to do with your local school.

The high school in the district next to mine is focused on athletics. Not surprisingly, their academic scores on standardized testing suck. OK fine, if your kid is a child athlete, but the problem is that it's the only public school for the district. If you have an academically gifted child and live in that district you either still send your kid there for an arguably sub-par education, or else you put the kid on a waiting list for the next closest academically-oriented high school (which will be much further away), or you send your kid to private school. The latter is probably not an option for most people in the neighbourhood though, since the incomes in that area generally don't support it. (The incomes in the next district over with the academically-oriented high school are similar.)

I lucked out. If I lived across the street, I'd be in that crappy school district. Yeah, districts vary, but I find it disturbing they'd have an entire district served only by an athletics-oriented high school.

 

[MistaFreeze]

Not sure how it is across the rest of the country, but basically in high school here if you aren't in honors/AP/gifted then you are in a sports class. The teachers don't take the classes seriously, the students don't take the classes seriously, and the parents don't take the classes seriously. Everything revolves around football, basketball, and baseball.

I know most of the high schools around here required you to have B grade averages or better to participate in sports. With that said, there were way too many jocks.

 

[Jeff7]

Agreed. This North American obsession with sports in school is frankly just stupid IMO.

There was a great Paul Mertin TV episode about this in the US. He showed the hooplah surrounding a football game. Parades. Sold out arena. Lots and lots of pomp and celebration. The whole town out in force.

It was a frickin' high school football game.

High school: Our football team made it to some finals-level game. School officials had everyone line the main hallway and applaud the team as they left for the game in the middle of the schoolday.

If our academic competition teams made it to final levels, that's when a few more students at the school learned of the existence of academic competitions - some students would protest why the competitors would get to leave quietly during the middle of class, and the teacher then explained it.

I know most of the high schools around here required you to have B grade averages or better to participate in sports. With that said, there were way too many jocks.

I don't know what our grade requirements were, but I did see plenty of special treatment in classes that were taught by teachers who were also football coaches.

 

[Dari]

What American school is the OP talking about that's obsessed with athletics? None of the schools I went to were like that. FWIW, if you're talking about college, those sports income subsidize the rest of the school. It's not all bad.

 

[UglyCasanova]

I know most of the high schools around here required you to have B grade averages or better to participate in sports. With that said, there were way too many jocks.

I'm not sure what the academic requirements are, I doubt it's a B average but I don't know that for sure. That said when the teachers aren't teaching real classes and are just handing out grades, it's not too difficult for the student athletes to get by.

 

[akugami]

Pretty much most Asian countries are like that. Thats why the Asian kids always kick the US ass in math and science tests. American kids like to think they're "more creative" though

Yeah, then you look at all the scientific breakthroughs and it's all Asian. I for one welcome our new Asian overlords. Wait...I'm Asian...bow down to me you peons! :whiste:


In all seriousness, I'm trying to find the right balance between pushing my kids and not overloading them. My oldest is just now entering kindergarten but we've been teaching them things like ABC's and 123's before they even went to school. The SO is teaching them Chinese so they can grow up bilingual.

 

[pontifex]

what i think hes referring to is a lot of school put more money into their sports teams than they do other things, like music or art programs. i thought this was pretty common knowledge.

 

[Imp]

In all seriousness, I'm trying to find the right balance between pushing my kids and not overloading them. My oldest is just now entering kindergarten but we've been teaching them things like ABC's and 123's before they even went to school. The SO is teaching them Chinese so they can grow up bilingual.

Don't get pissed at them for not getting 100%, don't make them feel like complete worthless garbage if they get 78% on a test. They will grow up to have confidence, self-esteem, and anxiety problems -- oh, and they will hate you.

Teaching a second language is a great idea, but if you enroll them in a formal glass, make sure what they teach is actually useful. I took close to a decade of after/during-school classes for an Asian language, and nothing stuck. All they did was do garbage dictation tests on poems that made no sense to me when I was barely at a conversational level and illiterate -- they had Asian born/raised teachers using Asian teaching methods on Canadian born/raised kids.

Compare this with the 5 or 6 years of French classes I had: I can actually read, write, and sort of converse with almost no out of class practice. They took the time to build vocabulary, grammar, conversation skills, etc.

 

[Eug]

Teaching a second language is a great idea, but if you enroll them in a formal glass, make sure what they teach is actually useful. I took close to a decade of after/during-school classes for an Asian language, and nothing stuck. All they did was do garbage dictation tests on poems that made no sense to me when I was barely at a conversational level and illiterate -- they had Asian born/raised teachers using Asian teaching methods on Canadian born/raised kids.

Compare this with the 5 or 6 years of French classes I had: I can actually read, write, and sort of converse with almost no out of class practice. They took the time to build vocabulary, grammar, conversation skills, etc.

Not a very good comparison. French and English have a lot of similarities, share essentially the same alphabet, and you live in a bilingual English-French country with common French TV channels and French on every cereal box and every government document. Hell, even the magazines on the airlines are in both English and French.

Most Asian languages are completely foreign. No shared writing system, completely different grammar, etc. In fact, languages like Chinese are derived from pictographs. It requires rote memorization, and the characters provide essentially no hints on the word is pronounced.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

What American school is the OP talking about that's obsessed with athletics? None of the schools I went to were like that. FWIW, if you're talking about college, those sports income subsidize the rest of the school. It's not all bad.

What a crock of shit. Oh, wait, it's Dari, that explains everything.


There are maybe a dozen schools in the entire country whose athletic departments make money and those are the ones with mega income from TV football contracts. Athletic departments for 99% of colleges are DEEP DEEP DEEP in the red and lesser sports like track and wrestling have to fund themselves through donations and bake sales just to exist or they'd get cut entirely.

 

[Phoenix86]

High school: Our football team made it to some finals-level game. School officials had everyone line the main hallway and applaud the team as they left for the game in the middle of the schoolday.

If our academic competition teams made it to final levels, that's when a few more students at the school learned of the existence of academic competitions - some students would protest why the competitors would get to leave quietly during the middle of class, and the teacher then explained it.

I don't know what our grade requirements were, but I did see plenty of special treatment in classes that were taught by teachers who were also football coaches.

😛

 

[Imp]

Not a very good comparison. French and English have a lot of similarities, share essentially the same alphabet, and you live in a bilingual English-French country with common French TV channels and French on every cereal box and every government document. Hell, even the magazines on the airlines are in both English and French.

Most Asian languages are completely foreign. No shared writing system, completely different grammar, etc. In fact, languages like Chinese are derived from pictographs. It requires rote memorization, and the characters provide essentially no hints on the word is pronounced.

True, French, Spanish, and other Romance languages are easier to learn if you know any of them.

Nonetheless, the teaching methods used for the Asian language back in MY grade-school were garbage. I'm not saying you don't need rote memorization. It's that I don't remember much time being spent just building a vocabulary, reviewing grammar, or being taught practical use of the language (e.g. letter writing, short stories, journals). It really was just poem after poem, dictation after dictation. And because, like you said, there were no hints on pronunciation, I just remembered the characters and not the sounds that actually accompanied the characters -- didn't need them for later because I could just memorize the next set of characters independently.

Also, I had the opportunity to practice that language with native speakers on a daily basis, which wasn't the case with French -- we had Asian TV, newspapers, books, and movies too, so I had at least the same exposure to it as French. On top of that, I had 3 extra years of classes in it than French.

I can't help but feel that if I had better teachers, I'd actually have better faculty with the Asian language. Not to say I was blameless for being a shit student, but I was 14 and under.

 

[ponyo]

Too many people are chasing after limited number of decent paying corporate jobs. So kids kill themselves to study for the college entrance exam. Parents pay for private tudors and after school study sessions hoping it gives their kids an edge. Problem is, basically every parent is doing the same for their kids so any advantage is gone. However, if the kids don't participate in after school private study sessions, they will be left behind academically by others who do. So it's no win situation.

My niece is in middle school in Korea. She only goes to two after school study sessions so she gets home little after 8pm. Once she enters high school, she'll have to study til 11pm or so. But that's the norm there. Sad part is most of these kids will go to college, graduate, and still will be unable to find a decent job.

 

[Imp]

Too many people are chasing after limited number of decent paying corporate jobs. So kids kill themselves to study for the college entrance exam. Parents pay for private tudors and after school study sessions hoping it gives their kids an edge. Problem is, basically every parent is doing the same for their kids so any advantage is gone. However, if the kids don't participate in after school private study sessions, they will be left behind academically by others who do. So it's no win situation.

My niece is in middle school in Korea. She only goes to two after school study sessions so she gets home little after 8pm. Once she enters high school, she'll have to study til 11pm or so. But that's the norm there. Sad part is most of these kids will go to college, graduate, and still will be unable to find a decent job.

That is the saddest part of it. You spend your first 21 or so years chasing after this coveted corporate bullshit job where they treat you like a number, an expendable piece of meat to make the bosses more money, and you still don't get it. And then you find out that who you knew and blew, nepotism, is even more important.

And why do you do it? Because your parents and society pressured you to do it.

 

[Thebobo]

Link

It seems to be the opposite end of the spectrum compared to US schools which has both pros and cons. I think the US definitely needs to rethink its obsession with sports in schools and start caring about actually educating our children again, but in the case of South Korea it looks like the price of high test scores may be too high (although how high is too high I guess would be a relativistic bar to set depending on the individual and society). What is the point of rote memorization and school essentially until 10 pm if it turns your brain into pudding and makes you unhappy with life.

It would be interesting to hear from any current or former students from South Korea if we have any on here.

Agree not sure why we idolize sports in schools as much as intellectual pursuits, unless we can get smart jocks. I you're on the sports team, hero, if you're on the math team nerd outcast.

BTW they still have PE?

 

[DigDog]

nice. i'll keep it in mind when i whip my students to a A+.