I had no idea that 44% of Korean kids who attend Ivy League schools drop out... but it isn't surprising. As Mike notes in his post, Korean parents don't realize that what Koreans call "education" these days is far from the real deal. Mike writes:
The problem is that Korean kids are quite good at the standardized testing that gets them [into] American colleges, but what the schools cranking them out don't do is prepare them to do all the work AFTER they get in the door. And that means no more multiple-choice, do your own research without plagiarizing, and the 8-10-page paper assigned today is due next week in class.
Korean education is good for stuffing facts into your head. It's not much good for anything else, and with an education culture that often seems little more than a stripped-down version of the old Confucian education system-- one reduced to its worst traits-- you can't really expect these kids to hack it in an actual educational environment. Those that do make it in the States are often the beneficiaries of a sort of clandestine affirmative action that forgives them their linguistic and cognitive incompetence* and grades them on a steep curve.
This is no slight against Koreans and Korean culture. It is, however, an indictment of the sad state of affairs that obtains today.
When I mentioned the Korean problem to one of the Americans I'd met during my walk, she responded that the situation is just as bad in the States. I think the problem is pretty bad here, too-- teaching kids through rote memorization, not giving them a chance to engage in any sort of higher-level cognition, stifling creativity in the name of cookie-cutter conformism, etc.-- but the US problem is, despite all that, nowhere near as soul-crushing as what you see in Korea.
*I'm not suggesting that Koreans-- my people, you'll recall-- are stupid or somehow inferior. Not at all. I'm talking about a culture that thinks of education purely in terms of getting a leg up on the competition. Gone is any pretense that education might be about personal enrichment or the cultivation of real wisdom. Gone, too, is the idea that education is merely about "getting a decent job." No: these days, when Korean college students talk about the bleak job market, they're talking about their inability to find A-level work straight out of undergrad. The previous generation's ethic of "gosaeng-eul saseo-do han-da" (the Korean version of the Chinese saying that you have to "eat bitter to taste sweet") is pretty much finished. Whatever "gosaeng" (hardship) students experience up until they enter college pretty much falls away once they become undergrads. Upon graduation, most students would love to be plopped into a secure, well-paying job. Stability is one of today's watchwords in Korea-- not fulfillment. This is what they hope the Education Machine will provide: a stable, secure job they can settle into and remain in forever.
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4 comments:
Addofio here. I don't know why, but the Open ID thingy is not accepting my URL.
NCLB is pushing us rapidly down the same path. It's all about the tests, which are multiple choice and which include only the most basic-level kinds of testing items. Creativity is brought in through the back door, and then only if a teacher or group of teachers is determined enough; the system doesn't recognize any value in creativity. I think there are still enough people in the schools who do value substance and creativity to keep us going for awhile; but I also fear that if something doesn't turn the policy climate around reasonably soon, we could end up in worse shape than the Korean system you describe.
I could go on--and on and on--but I'll spare you.
My management students (행정 - I am not sure if that means admin or political science or what) mostly want to be public officials and work for the government.
The reason they give is 'stability'. A large part of my current third year class is learning about job interviews and I am having trouble explaining that 'the job is stable' is not a good answer to "Why should I hire you?".
Not sure what to make of the author of study basically saying that this is happening because they are studying too much relative to participation in extracurricular -- activities? So you want them to study less in order to graduate at a higher rate?
Probably the paper is misconveying what the author said. But in any case, my guess is this has less to do with inherent problems of Korean education --of which there are many, I admit -- than the massive difficulty that comes with growing up in one country only to be planted at an elite university at an entirely different country and be expected to succeed. I would say probably the greatest factor is quite simply the fact that their mother tongue is not english. Laziness of course plays a role, since I would think if they can get accepted into a school like Harvard, I'd be shocked if you didn't have the ability to graduate whether english is your first language or no. Implementing rote memorization tactics, while not guaranteed to make you a better person, should be plenty sufficient for you to get that degree
Addofio,
Interesting points.
Brian,
"Haeng-jeong" is often rendered as "administration" in English, such as when you find a "haeng-jeong-gwan" on campus-- the admin building.
JW,
Thanks for commenting. My own feeling is that lack of English mastery isn't enough to explain the dropout rate. If it did, then the other demographics with which Koreans were compared would show similar dropout rates (I'm not talking about the Indian students, of course). You're right, though, to point out that the survey might be flawed and perhaps shouldn't be taken at face value. I'd like to get hold of the research paper Mike mentions; it seems to be an in-depth study.
"So you want them to study less in order to graduate at a higher rate?"
I'd say the maxim should be "work smarter, not harder." Memorizing facts is the lowest-level cognitive activity, i.e., it's only a beginning. Beyond that, you've got (following Bloom's Taxonomy), comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Think about evaluation for a moment: getting an opinion out of a Korean student-- in a class situation-- is often like pulling teeth. It's a running joke among Western teachers: "How do you quiet a Korean student? Ask him what he thinks about something." The joke reflects a cultural quirk that, in my opinion, can put Koreans behind the curve. Education in Korea isn't about free exchange of ideas or encouraging the spirit of inquiry; it's often about learning one way to handle a certain set of problems, and sticking to that way no matter what. Procedure as opposed to method, if that makes sense.
That's why I'm always happy to see technological innovations come out of Korean science: such innovations happen only when enterprising people buck the prevailing cultural trend and think outside the box. They'd happen more frequently if the educational system cultivated Koreans' natural ingenuity better.
Obviously, there are exceptions, but as a language teacher, I've noticed that the exceptional students tend to be those with wider horizons-- by which I mean, students who've lived abroad for more than a few months; such students understand the importance of an exchange of ideas, as opposed to assuming the teacher is an engram-Aquarius, pouring knowledge into their passive, empty skulls. The idea of teacher-as-facilitator is still foreign to most Korean classes.
So: less stress on learning irrelevant facts and more stress on learning relevant facts plus learning how to think would be nice. And yes, that goes almost equally for the Western system, too, at least through high school. Beyond that, one's mileage may vary, depending on the quality of university one attends.
"Implementing rote memorization tactics, while not guaranteed to make you a better person, should be plenty sufficient for you to get that degree."
This may be true. If it is, it's a sad statement about education all over the world. I imagine, though, that it's less true at the better Western universities, and from what I gather from Western friends studying in Seoul, Korean higher academe isn't exactly a robot factory, either.
So one tentative conclusion I draw from all this is that the situation is complicated, but we should acknowledge that there are real problems with the Korean system-- problems routinely encountered by Westerners who teach in Korea.
What I find ironic about this situation is that philosophical Taoism, a major source of Asian values, preaches exactly the sort of situational flexibility valued by Westerners, with their love of the scientific method and scholarly inquiry. Meanwhile, the Asian systems place too much emphasis on things like memorization and obedience to authority (which, in large doses, often stifles inquiry), resulting in a very un-Taoist inflexibility.
Spending some time on the respective merits and demerits of Western and East Asian approaches to education sounds like a topic for another blog post. Thanks again for the comment.
Kevin
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