Secretary Arne Duncan has frequently pointed to the high test scores of students in South Korea as a model for American students to copy. We have heard again and again that we are losing “the global competition” to nations like South Korea where students and parents take tests very seriously. Our students, the Secretary never tires of telling us, are slackers. Their parents want them to be well-rounded when they should all be enrolled in Advanced Placement courses, burning the midnight oil, or attending after-school programs in ever-longer school days.
On Sunday, the New York Times published an article that refuted the myth of South Korea as the acme of educational excellence. The South Korean system, the author writes, is “an assault upon our children.” If all you care about is test scores, South Korean schools look great. But if you want students who are thoughtful, creative, and engaged in their learning, look elsewhere, writes Se-Woong Koo, whose family moved from Seoul to Vancouver to avoid the stress of South Korean schooling. Most parents pressure students to excel in their studies and to do whatever it takes to get high scores.
“Thirteen years later, in 2008,” the author writes, “I taught advanced English grammar to 11-year-olds at an expensive cram school in the wealthy Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam. The students were serious about studying but their eyes appeared dead.”
“The world may look to South Korea as a model for education — its students rank among the best on international education tests — but the system’s dark side casts a long shadow. Dominated by Tiger Moms, cram schools and highly authoritarian teachers, South Korean education produces ranks of overachieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness. The entire program amounts to child abuse. It should be reformed and restructured without delay…..
“Cram schools like the one I taught in — known as hagwons in Korean — are a mainstay of the South Korean education system and a symbol of parental yearning to see their children succeed at all costs. Hagwons are soulless facilities, with room after room divided by thin walls, lit by long fluorescent bulbs, and stuffed with students memorizing English vocabulary, Korean grammar rules and math formulas. Students typically stay after regular school hours until 10 p.m. or later.”
“This “investment” in education is what has been used to explain South Koreans’ spectacular scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, increasingly the standard by which students from all over the world are compared to one another.
“But a system driven by overzealous parents and a leviathan private industry is unsustainable over the long run, especially given the physical and psychological costs that students are forced to bear.
“Many young South Koreans suffer physical symptoms of academic stress, like my brother did. In a typical case, one friend reported losing clumps of hair as she focused on her studies in high school; her hair regrew only when she entered college.”
The South Korean system is institutionalized child abuse. Children exist either to glorify the family or to build the national economy. What has been sacrificed? The happiness of the children; the right to live a normal life in which they are not cogs in a national economic machine.
Are you listening, Secretary Duncan? Are you listening, “New York Times” columnists and editorial board? Are you listening, television pundits?
It seems like Americans aren’t smart enought to persue Life, Liberty, and Happiness anymore. It’s more the Bill Gate’s model where people deserve to lead a productive life. When I head that I always have to stop and think and question. Opps, I forgot, that’s something that people used to do.
It’s more than just stealing childhood. The Korean children I taught, also in a Gangnam neighborhood, were amoral, uncreative, automatons…
Seems to be a basic misunderstanding going on here…this is from yesterday:
“SIMON: How will you judge if Common Core is working, Governor, let’s say in three years?
MARKELL: Well, I think the only measurement that matters is student achievement. But we expect, over time, students to improve their critical thinking skills as well as the, you know, the straight knowledge and facts and all of that. But in terms of how they use the skills to solve problems, that’s what this is all about.
SIMON: And it will be measured against South Korea and other nations that seem to have…
MARKELL: Well, that’s the real world – that’s the world we live in. We’ve been doing the academic equivalent of teaching our kids to play basketball by having them shoot at an eight-foot basket. And you can get very good shooting at an eight-foot basket. But when you get into a game where your competition has been practicing shooting at a 10-foot basket, you don’t do so well. And we’re not being honest with them. And I think a dose of honesty is in order since our children are going to be competing for jobs with, as you say, whether it’s South Korea or lots of other countries – it’s the best in the world. And so we need to be a lot more honest with them about what proficiency means in a global economy.”
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/02/337320778/amid-criticism-states-gear-up-for-common-core?ft=1&f=
I recently watched the documentary Particle Fever which takes place in Switzerland but follows scientists from all over the world, including America. These particle physicists, the top in their field, launch the a Large Hadron Collider on their quest to find the origins of our universe by smashing particles. During the launch, the 4000 scientists who participated from all over the world gathered to watch. I was struck that there wasn’t a single Asian scientist. What is missing from their education that prevents them from attaining the highest levels in Science?
I made my kids watch the film because I wanted them to see that it doesn’t take a genius to create an app for Facebook. But it does take thousands of smart, dedicated, and passionate people to make one significant discovery.
Because Roy Schwitters, Director of the US SuperConducting Supercollider ( SSC ), failed to explain to those of us in the great unwashed and to the attorneys in Congress who are naive in science the benefits of the SSC, it was aborted during a budget crunch in the early 90s.
Much had been done to complete the underground oval shaped tunnel for the proton path. Magnets far more powerful than had ever previously existed were developed to propel the protons on their path around the SSC oval.
During a severe recession, those who dominate in Congress. a heavily attorney based population who tend to be naive in the sciences, saw a multi-billion project during a tight budgetary period.
The plug was pulled on the SSC, uprooting the lives of the hundreds of the top physicists in the world who had been recruited to be a part of the team developing the world’s most exciting science project.
With the exceedingly powerful magnets setting gathering dust in warehouses, scientists sought to find some use for this by product of the pure science initiative of the SSC.
While Dallas is not the physics Mecca of the world, due to Congress
pulling the plug on what the scientifically clueless attorneys thought was a boondoggle, medical science has now a tool which has advanced diagnostics to an unprecedented level.
MRIs or magnetic resonance imaging had earlier versions that were ineffective due to inadequacies of magnet power. The incredibly powerful magnets commissioned by SSC Director Roy Schwitters to power the protons around the oval track of the SSC enabled the world of medicine to advance by light years in diagostic capability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging
When the images from an MRI are fed into a three dimensional printer, a neurosurgeon can have an absolutely accurate model of the patient’s brain to study and plan for the most successful operation. vastly improving the odds of success in this most challenging of surgeries.
The concentration of talent in Switzerland could have been in Dallas had there adequate communication of the incredible benefits to humanity to be derived from the successful implementation of the SuperConducting Supercollider.
Thus we see that our dichotomy of education in the US has its societal costs. Those who have tremendous abilities in the sciences tend to be weak in communicating to non-scientists. Those who have tremendous abilities in the communications fields. both written and spoken, tend to be weak in comprehension of science.
This is the root cause of Congress pulling the plug on the SuperConducting Supercollider near Dallas in the 1990s, as there
was a failure to communicate.
You make a good argument for teaching and developing the whole child/ student/ person, not merely the part that holds down a job/ profession.
Dormand,
Very interesting history. Thanks for writing about it at this blog. Science and education, which have long term benefits, have to be made to deliver money into the pockets of the 1% immediately, because the group lacks the ability to delay gratification. The public falls for style over substance as the Gillis senate campaign in Kentucky, proves.
Duncan forgot to mention the giant, private, for-profit tutoring industry in South Korea, and how families pay for it out of pocket. Instead he attributes the high test scores to teacher pay bonuses and college class rank when teachers enter the profession:
Wouldn’t that be important information that people need in order to honestly compare the two sets of test scores? Why no mention of the for-profit test tutoring sector, and who is paying for it?
“That Number 1 spot is now occupied by – guess who? — South Korea. So, you may be asking: What are countries like South Korea doing for their kids that we aren’t? The answer is, a lot.
There’s a new book out called “The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got That Way.”
The author, Amanda Ripley, found an interesting way to compare American schools with those in top-performing countries.
She spent time with American students who did a year of school abroad, and with students from other countries who went to school in the United States.
One of the countries she compares us to is South Korea.
Amanda came away believing that these other countries are doing a lot better than the United States in education because – simply put — they’re more serious about it.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/arne-duncan-why-cant-we-be-more-like-south-korea/
It is most helpful to see the reports of a highly authoritarian grinding educational environment which would appear to lead to burn-out in this culture.
However, everything is relative.
South Korea shines by any comparison to North Korea, where the dictator, Kim Jung Un, absorbs virtually all power and virtually all of the resources of the country, while the common family lacks even adequate nutrition to sustain existence. Reports of families having to eat grass soup, because there is nothing else to eat, are common.
South Korea shines in comparison the the horrible poverty that existed there in the 1950s. Reports are common of South Korean citizens traveling for miles to scavenge in the land fills of the US Army bases for food and other usable discards.
Industry in South Korea is thriving in areas, apparently benefiting from having access to a critical mass of well developed human capital resources sufficient to dominate global markets in fields once lead by the US: appliances, consumer electronics, and the value segment of the auto industry.
We are very fortunate to have neighbors who are immigrants from South Korea, and who are true solid citizens in our community. Their daughter has exceptional work ethic, the most solid of educations, and a dedication to helping in the upward mobility of those in lower socioeconomic tiers utilizing the arts as an uplifting force, as does the highly successful Hobart Shakespeareans initiative in the dire poverty area of Los Angeles, itself inspiring a population which is half Korean.
One key factor in which South Korea has a huge competitive advantage over the US is in
its superior broadband penetration in residences, approaching some 93% of homes. This is very high speed service at a minimal cost.
We in the US have suffered as our carriers have followed a cash harvest strategy, minimizing upgrades and charging the very most that the market will bear.
Our digital divide in the US is legendary, as lower socioeconomic areas tend to have minimal broadband access, hampering small business innovation, awareness of the general population and especially educational advancement in areas following the third grade, the level in my opinion, that books should be the key learning resource.
One leader who tirelessly railed against the macro impact of the broadband providers cartel in the US is Bob Metcalfe, alum of PARC ( the Palo Alto Research Center ) inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3COM, and past President of the MIT Alumni Club.
( UT Austin was able to recruit Metcalf to be a professor, so you can expect this to be among the most fertile petri dishes of innovation in the country for start-ups which will render obsolete the sluggards and cash harvesters of many industries. )
Bob is a hilarious speaker, most rare for a techie, and thus do not miss an opportunity to hhear him speak. Politically correctness is not in his top 100 priorities and he calls it like hhe sees it, something we are in dire need of in this country.
It recently came to my attention that the consumer goods distribution system in South Korea conspires against the buyer allowing confiscatory markups to wholesalers and retailers on common goods. I had pointed this out to several friends still in the business sector as an excellent opportunity to do an end-run around a grossly inefficient entrenched business model and sell quality consumer goods at fair prices via the web to allow South Korean consumers access to goods at world prices.
While it appears that education in South Korea is overly pressurized, this is not uncommon in any of the cultures that hold Confucius in the highest of respect.
It is common in the US for Asian families to purchase the text book for a vital course one year in advance of the first day of the course for their student to thoroughly master before day one of instruction. In addition, it is common for the families to have their student attend a summer session at a top college on the course that their student will be attending that following fall.
Therefore, you should not be surprised when you see high school valedictorian spots well represented by Asians, who might be only 2% of the local population.
It is not my place to tell the South Koreans how they should manage any part of their society, but I suggest that they are far beyond the point of diminishing returns on grinding on the academics. Emulating Rafe Esquith’s success with the Hobart Shakespeareans and developing high levels of mastery at stage presentations of the classics would probably do wonders for the effectiveness, teamwork and innovative aiblities of their students.
“Industry in South Korea is thriving in areas, apparently benefiting from having access to a critical mass of well developed human capital resources sufficient to dominate global markets in fields once lead by the US: appliances, consumer electronics, and the value segment of the auto industry.”
Industry in South Korea has been benefiting from government industrial policy that actively helps home industries with subsidies and tariffs –don’t make it sound as if it’s just brainy, dogged employees.
One of the consequences of this academic push is that South Korea now has a glut of college graduates and not enough decent paying jobs for them:
“Young South Koreans face jobless woes with ‘graduate glut'”
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/young-south-koreans-face-jobless-woes-graduate-glut-045231500.html
You may find The Hudson Institute’s Edwin S.Rubinstein’s 1998 white paper “The College Payoff Illusion” to be both timeless and applicable to any culture, nation or language.
http://web1.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/college.htm
“New College Grads: Your Retail Cashier Job Awaits You”
http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/college-retail-jobs-degrees/2013/01/30/id/488038/
THe problem is much worse than that. THere are not enough colleges and prep schools in Korea, a country of only 50 million; so millions of Korean kids go to USA and international schools for a leg-up and a chance to go to unclogged non-KOrean high shcools. insane!
omberg Businessweek
Companies & Industries
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/koreans-shop-the-web-for-overseas-bargains
Koreans Find Overseas Bargains a Click Away
By Cynthia Kim May 15, 2014
(Corrects currency conversion in the eighth paragraph.)
When Lim Ji-han, an office worker in Seoul, decided to buy a television last year, he ordered it from Amazon.com (AMZN). TheSamsung (005930:KS) model he wanted was available at a department store, but buying it locally would have cost at least $600 more than the $1,243 he ended up spending. “Why should I pay more for the same, or a very similar, product?” he asks.
Lim is what South Koreans call a jicgoojok, a buyer who is challenging local merchants by shopping from overseas online retailers. “Word is spreading online fast that products can be bought much cheaper abroad,” says Gene Park, a retail analyst at Woori Investment & Securities. The savings from shopping online more than make up for international shipping fees, added import duties, and long delivery times, he says.
Retail, like many sectors of the Korean economy, is heavily influenced by the chaebols—large, often family-owned conglomerates that function as oligopolies and prosper by capitalizing on their protected market and by charging very high prices. The government has long protected chaebols to spur growth. A 2012 AIG (AIG) report on chaebol reform in the country noted that “the expansion of the chaebol into retail is at the expense of small businesses, competition, and the interests of the consumers.” To gain a foothold in the market, companies such as the Gap (GPS) and Chloé (CFR:VX) have signed exclusive import deals with Korean retailers and gained instant access to a large distribution channel. They have little incentive to try to establish new lines of distribution.
Local consumers, with few options other than local retailers, face prices that can run nine times higher than costs overseas. But over the last five years, blogs have sprouted up that point readers to online deals and discounts, boosting direct buying. Overseas credit card spending grew 15.4 percent in 2013, outpacing the increase in domestic spending of 3.2 percent, according to the Bank of Korea. Imports through e-commerce sites rose 47 percent in 2013, to about $1 billion, according to the Korea Customs Service.
Han Ji-won, a housewife in Seoul, says she prefers to shop from the Gap’s U.S. website. Even with shipping and insurance fees, Han says she saves about 30 percent compared with shopping at the company’s stores in Korea. “I don’t mind the delivery time.”
Share prices of the country’s three biggest stores—Hyundai Department Store (069960:KS), Shinsegae (004170:KS), and Lotte Department Store (023530:KS)—have fallen this year. The move away from in-store shopping is forcing them to slash prices, says Baek Un-chan, head of the Korea Customs Service. Last August, Polo Ralph Lauren (RL) cut prices 40 percent at its Korean stores, according to the company.
South Korea’s government is pushing to open the market to more and smaller retailers, prompted by consumer complaints over the price gaps. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance recently acknowledged that the lack of competition for licensees of overseas brands is keeping domestic prices of imported goods high. In April the Customs Service said it plans to simplify its requirements for consumers who buy directly from overseas retailers and to help Koreans verify the authenticity of products.
Startups such as Malltail.com are also helping online shoppers. Based in Seoul, the company also operates in the U.S., Germany, China, and Japan. It provides customers with shipping addresses in those countries, since many online retailers don’t offer international shipping, especially on fragile items like electronics, and because many websites don’t recognize Korean addresses when translated into English. Malltail’s revenue increased thirteenfold from 2010 to 2013, to 26 billion won ($25.4 million), the company reports.
“Korean consumers are savvy, smart, and want more choices,” says Choi Seung-sik, a Malltail agent. “We’re just facilitating the process and reducing the delivery risk.” Global Internet companies are becoming interested in the market as the power of South Korea’s big retailers erodes. Amazon plans to open a South Korean site this year, according to press reports citing industry officials.
For shoppers such as Han, who makes about 70 percent of her purchases at overseas websites, the attraction of direct buying is unlikely to go away. “Jicgoo is just a black hole. Once you start doing it, you can’t stop,” she says. “Why would you?”
The bottom line: South Korea’s retailers will have to lower prices to compete with the values buyers are finding online.
Ah, yes. The relentless quest for cheaper prices makes life better for everyone! Hallelujah and praise the almighty market! (And please ignore the dead downtown business districts; shame on them for presuming to get between us and rock-bottom prices.)
This obsession over standardized testing is one reason why the NEA Representative Assembly voted to conduct a national campaign against “toxic testing.” I spoke about this at our recent school board meeting in Palm Beach County, FL:
“Testing Has Become Toxic”
Who really cares what any test scores are, other than some ivory tower academic or some politician seeking to skew results and secure some high position in an administration easily deluded as to competence to manage?
What is needed is a collaborative process which will result in high school degree holders being able to register for regular college courses and not be relegated to the non-credit developmental ( aka remedial ) courses to learn what should have been mastered in secondary schooling or to qualify for registration in training for one of the highly skilled trade craft fields.
We need students who are capable of writing concise and persuasive one page papers and to handle basic math skills so as to be competent in areas requiring competence in numeracy.
Anyone who cares about the development of the next generation should own and read at least once annually Golman’s “Emotional Intelligence” to gain a full perspective on the predictive value of test scores.
Test scores are absolutely meaningless to those with the real talent to attract and retain those who can make a difference in an organization.
Powerful message. Thanks for posting.
He says student achievement but he means test scores. This is one of the problems with the public discussion of education. No one in the corporate schools movement says what he really means.
Finland is a fine example of following other countries educational practices. However, they chose to acquire sound research in education which was NOT used to make exploit their teachers and students and for profit for the rich. It just depends on whose adopting what philosophy that is going to make the difference. I wish some American parents would take education more serious like they do in Korea. But until we establish the right educational policy from people who know education, why should we knock the Koreans? We’re doing worse by our own “standards.”
While we can debate whether or not the US should copy the South Korean system, I think it is plainly disrespectful to Koreans to claim their system is “institutionalized child abuse.” Like any system, there are both costs and benefits. Were I Korean, I would argue that sending American children to public schools such as those in Camden, NJ or E. St. Louis, IL is truly abusive.
It is institutionalized child abuse when politicians in this country ignore the fact that we have the highest child poverty rate of developed nations, do nothing to promote jobs with livable wages, since that is not in the best interests of their billionaire backers, and then scapegoat teachers for not solving poverty on their own.
http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014
This is the same old story. A half century ago when Sputnik went up we were supposed to emulate the GREAT Russian schools. Where would we be now had we done that. And after we put a man on the moon did the schools get ANY credit?
When Deming went to Detroit to advise them to make better products and they refused, went to Japan where they listened and Detroit crashed we were supposed to emulate the GREAT Japanese schools. Since Japan’s economy has tanked for the last decade or so do you hear the hue and cry that we must emulate the GREAT Japanese schools now?
People, politicians have a very short memory.
Education has become a political football. Money supplants scholarly research. Integrity is supplanted by test scores.
In response to Dr. Ravitch’s posting of “Why We Should Not Copy Education in S.Korea”- Everything in moderation.
Parents are extremely important in advancing their children’s education. But they must strive for the happy medium. They must strive to help their children to adjust to their bumps in the road. Good example is very important: helping and respecting others, pursing one’s interest, respecting nature, encouraging children to develop their talents what ever they are but above all be satisfied with what they can not change. Work to bring about positive change. Material things aren’t going to bring happiness. Money can’t buy happiness nor can one give away happiness; it keeps bouncing back.
One of the greatest things parents can do for their children is to read to them daily from day one.
“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. ” Commission on Reading in a Nation of Readers
“You do not have to read every night – just on the nights you eat.”
Dr.Carmelita Williams former president of the NRA
“Children’s first grade reading achievement depends most of all on how much they know about reading before they get to school… The differences in reading potential are shown not to be strongly related to poverty, handedness, dialect, gender, IQ, mental age, or any other such difficult-to-alter circumstances. They are due instead to learning and experience – and specifically to learning and experience with print and print concepts.” Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print, 494pp
We have such phenomenal children authors and illustrators! Reading is learning about life. Each story is like painting a picture of some aspect of life. “ Reading empowers the child with a desire and confidence…Stirs the imagination and builds a sense of wonder. Reading to children, parents hand down a special kind of magic that will enrich their child as nothing else can do…” Bernice E Cullinan,
When my grandson was three years old he told his mother that he likes to play alone … “because that’s when the stories come.” Another grandson at the age of four asked to learn the Russian alphabet; knew the English alphabet backwards; knew the planets…he continues to love learning.
When yet another grandson broke his arm at the age of two he asked his mother, “Am I being difficult like Max?” (Max in Where the Wild Things Are)
Parents share values of honesty, loyalty, courage… which so many children stories convey. At the age of seven year my granddaughter learned empathy. When she saw a bumblebee struggling in the water she turned to me and asked, “Shall we let it die or let it live?” Without a response she took a leaf from a nearby bush; placed it in the water by the bumble bee; let it crawl onto the leaf; and then carefully placed it in the grass.
Each story adds to the mosaic of our journey through life. A thirst for knowledge is always there unless someone has thwarted the desire.
My children all read / are reading to their children and more often then not they read in a dramatic way bringing the stories to life. They talk about the stories and relate them to their children’s lives in some way- learning in a fun way. No pressure. Pressure clouds one’s thinking. (Common Core loses out on this aspect of learning with 50% mandatory non fiction.)
My now six-foot-fifteen-year-old-football-baseball-player- grandson chooses to get involved with what ever school activity is open to him and challenges himself is getting straight As – not his parents expectations. (He also knows that he better never stand by and watch a bully in action- he will be grounded for a week.)
Scores are meaningless except to boost a child’s self-image. If children are given support and a positive self-image by parents and other adults then test scores aren’t important. More and more colleges are not asking for scores; they are concerned about the students’ records including extra curricular activities.
Maybe the reformers could start bleeding money into the system where the US is taking on incoming parentless children, housing and feeding them, and pour some money into setting up charter schools and teaching them; now wouldn’t that be a cause? They could do whatever they liked educationally because, after all, these are some needy children – would there be money in it at the end? Well, if the taxpaying public would pay for the educations, ka-ching.
The reformers need to find another shiny cause to catch their eyes so all this nonsense can end and public schools can be funded and “saved” without their “help.”
We have seen very expensive and very foolhardy implementations at the DOE by newly installed political friends of the incoming Administrations who lack actual experience in developing people.
Our human capital resources are far to important to subject to the untested whims of political appointees every Presidential election.
Our nation has suffered from a lack of organizational effectiveness and of critical thinking. The incredibly expensive and deeply flawed No Child Left Behind as well as the federally insured student loan program which put the full faith and credit of the United States of America behind loans issued to fund tuition to totally inept and unproven colleges who waste the time of their students, who frequently find no jobs except those open to high school diploma holders.
To protect our Federal Reserve Board Central Banking System, the Federal Reserve Governors serves on fourteen year terms after appointment by the President and confirmation by the Senate.
Rather than have public policy on our human capital resources subject to knee jerk changes every time the political party changes, we should eliminate the Department of Education and replace it with a Department of Human Capital Resources with Governors to serve for fourteen year terms, as do those with the Federal Reserve Board.
Governors should be chosen from those proven think tanks with years of study on how to improve effectiveness in our schools, such as The Brookings institution, the Rand Corporation and the Pew Research Group.
Dr Angela Dye refers to A and B achievement. Testing is B or lower level achieverment while teaching the whole child is A or higher level achievement. Only teaching and assessing at B level achievement strips students of every ounce of empowerment and creativity. It bleeds the soul out of the child turning them into blurry eyed stepford kids.
I feel sorry for the kids in Korea. While they should respect their parents, It’s time for their parents to respect the kids intelligence and abilities. Kids are not commodities and it is immoral to treat them as such.
Check out http://www.wholechildreform.com for news about my upcoming book that details and brainstorms Common Core. A system of education that first and foremost empowers kids, as well as parents and teachers to teach the whole child, to provide their pathway to their future.
South Korea’s case shows us how privatization machine intervenes into public education to capitalize on academic needs for students and parents, although differently from the US. Like Japan, South Korea has a very solid public education system. Their strict central government bureaucracy disallows private corporations/businesses from taking over district schools by creating ‘charters’ and/or privately-funded schools–like we see in the US. Many of these companies function as cram schools. They are not as big as Pearson, McGraw Hill or ETS. But they are capable of getting into state-controlled market through aggressive sales pitch. They lure many students ranging from elementary to high school into rigorous tutoring/preparation to get into elite private schools. Some of these cram/preparatory schools entice wealthy family into sending kids at pre-school level for this rigorous discipline.
That’s how privatization machine is working in countries like Japan and South Korea, which usually come on the Top 10 of PISA International periodic table. Unlike charcoals and vouchers in the US, the private education sector won’t function in a way to replace public schools, unless the central government has a change of heart.
This kind of private sales pitch is hardly an ideal form of education for ordinary students– and certainly NOT what the US should follow because it’s just rubbing salt into the wounds. It drives students and teachers to the Jericho Road that leading to the hell of exam ordeal. It will significantly affect their psychological development in their adolescent stage– and eventually their worldview in their adult life. It’s a kiss of death.
has there been a study to show the effects of these S Korean children years later on how they cope with life, with marriage- a job, their psychological and emotional personalities?
Sports betting in South Korea
Why We Should Not Copy Education in South Korea | Diane Ravitch's blog
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Why We Should Not Copy Education in South Korea | Diane Ravitch's blog