Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Does Korean teenagers' knowledge of history, even their own history, ever suck. Today I suddenly got handed a second-year HS class to teach with 15 minutes' notice (CT's grandfather died last night) so I pulled out a trivia quiz I was planning to use for another class.

One of the questions was what was life expectancy in Korea in 1900, give or take five years. I could have said give or take 15 and no one would have been close. After I managed to explain what life expectancy was most were guessing more than twice what it actually was (23 for men and 25 for women). I decided not to mention that during the Japanese occupation it almost doubled.

Another question was who invaded Korea in the 1200s. They looked clueless so I told them it starts with an 'M'. One of my brighter students guessed Mexico.

At least I can take comfort in the fact that the history teacher is having as little luck instilling any knowledge in them as I am developing most of their conversational English skills.

[cruisemonkey]

If it makes you feel any better - most first year university students in Canada don't know whose side China was on in WW2.

[Tjames426]

Korean students are not expected to know about ANOTHER countries history.

The OP was, I think, talking about South Korean students not knowing THEIR own history.

[cruisemonkey]

WW2 is not another country's history - Canada's or Korea's!

I am well aware of what the OP was talking about... and I was talking about Canadian university students not knowing their own country's history.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[SHANE02]

So....we have ............umm

A foreign language

A new teacher

Questions totally beyond the student's experiences

And a teacher who is surprised they don't know the answer.

No offence, but these "guess what I'm thinking" "quizzes" are nothing to do with education. But you know that already right?

[ttompatz]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[SHANE02]

[MissSeoul]

[cruisemonkey]

[Draz]

[marlow]

One of my students thought that if Dongnae Fortress was more recent than Gaya, then maybe it was built after the Korean War.

[IncognitoHFX]

I did a Chuseok activity. I compared and contrasted Chuseok with Thanksgiving, showed traditional meals and dress from Canada and compared it with Korean traditional dress.

I told the students that Canadian Thanksgiving was between two and three hundred years old and then asked them how old Chuseok was. I already knew the answer as I did the research myself, but my students had no sweet idea. Some said it was fifty years old, others said five hundred... one of my classes argued that it started with their parents and another class argued that it was between five and then thousand years old (an advanced class).

The answer: Approximately two thousand years old. They simply had no idea, neither did the co-teachers. However, I can't be too hard on them, it might be something contested or completely irrelevant.

What's even more perplexing is Canadian student's lack of knowledge. In my first year studying at a university in Moncton, New Brunswick (a university I later left and transferred away from), several students in my Western Civilizations course had no idea what the Holocaust was.

I tutored a girl in the third year of a History major at a neighbouring University (Dalhousie) and she didn't know what powers were fighting in World War 2. She had no idea that the war involved Germany, or that Canada was involved. She knew the word "Hitler", but didn't know it was a person. She had never heard of the Holocaust either.

You think that's bad, watch that video on Youtube interviewing Americans...

[Yu_Bum_suk]