korean education system

Whoa, Koreans are crazy about education. Remember in elementary school, when your teacher told you that students in Asia go to school all the time, even on Saturdays? Well, that wasn't just a clever lie to get you to stop complaining, it really is true. My students go to go school essentially from 9 am to 11 pm Monday through Friday. They have public school every other Saturday. When they were studying for high school entrance exams, they stayed at our academy until 2:30 several nights in a row. There is extreme competition and pressure to be academically successful. I still haven't figured out when students do their homework. There are several important differences between Korean and American education systems, beyond just the amount of time spent studying.

First of all, there is the phenomenon of hagwons. These are the private academies that students go to when they are through with regular school for the day. Just about every foreigner teaching English in Korea works for a hagwon. An interesting realization I had was that my students learn much more advanced English at our hagwon than they do in public school. This is also true of the math hagwons they attend, the science hagwons, etc. There is so much pressure to advance academically that many students are literally years ahead of their public school curriculum do to attending private academies after hours. They go to public school because they have to, but they don't learn anything there. A lot of times, I think they read the books we assign them during their public school classes (oh, that's when they do their homework). When kids get accepted to their fancy private high schools, I'm pretty sure they just stop going to their public middle school classes.

The more I began to realize this, the more qualms I began to have with the hagwon system. This sounds to me like a recipe for the destruction of public schools. I don't like this at all. Because, when I say that all kids attend hagwons, what I really mean is that all kids whose parents can afford it attend hagwons. But I also have mixed feelings about this. As much as I believe education should not be something you buy, I can certainly think of worse things to buy. On the one hand, it is really cool that people choose to spend money on extra education for their kids. I mean, these are definitely some of the smartest kids I've ever encountered. I read Civil Disobedience with my seventh graders (granted, it was a little too difficult for them, but still). On the other hand, it just doesn't really seem fair that rich people get the opportunity to give their kids a much better education, and thus much more opportunity in life. But Korea is definitely not the only society designed to keep the rich rich. Oddly enough, I'm not the only person with these concerns; it was actually illegal to pay for education in Korea, prior to 1991. It's still illegal to buy or sell private tutoring lessons.

Second in the list of interesting topics concerning Korean education is the use of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is definitely allowed and used in public schools, though to a lessening degree. Most hagwons, I believe do not generally hit their students, but ours does. Just to get this out in the open, only Korean teachers hit the kids, we are not asked, expected or allowed to. That, at least, makes my life a little easier. What makes it very difficult to teach these kids is the fact that they don't respond to non-physical punishments. I've had to institute a policy of punishing my kids by making them go out in the hall and hold the push up position for five minutes. I feel really bad even doing this. At the beginning of the term, I had all my kids write me about why they were taking my class, and several actually asked me beat them in order to make them learn English better. This is situation is one of many factors that cause teaching in Korea to be K times more difficult than teaching at home. But, just so you know, Korean teachers are not heartless. I have one class that is terribly behaved, and I asked the Korean teacher who also teaches them if they were bad for him too. His response was "Yes, but they are too cute to beat."

All of this focus on education is obviously with the intent of giving your children a better life. Access to the good jobs, wealth and prosperity, all that good stuff. Interestingly enough, Koreans are actually becoming "too educated", with problems similar to the US, where there aren't enough jobs for the pool of highly educated people. Nobody wants to work the manufacturing or labor jobs, so immigrants come in to work in that sector, but there is strikingly high unemployment among the well educated. Many people actually leave the country to find jobs in their field of interest.

Okay, time for just some fun facts about Korean education. Once you get into middle school, girls must have above shoulder-length hair, and dudes have to have short hair (unclear just how short). If you break the rule, the teacher pulls out the scissors and barbers you up right in class. In addition to learning English in public school, you are also required to take either Chinese or Japanese. You have to wear a uniform to public school, but you get to pick your own shoes. Obvious from the girls in skirts, vests and tights rocking bright green and orange Nikes. Every student carries an extremely well-equipped pencil case with them at all times. We're talking at least 4 colors of pen, several pencils, extra pencil lead, at least two giant erasers, a red wax pencil, and an exacto knife. Text messaging is a rampant problem, with many students performing a blind, one hand under the table looking straight at you while texting technique. I don't know how they do it.