Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wylies99]

'Korean education fails to foster critical thinking'

http://asiancorrespondent.com/korea-beat/korean-education-fails-to-foster-critical-thinking

That's the title to this Hankyoreh article, which was published back in December, and spent too long buried in my bookmarks.

There has been controversy in our country over the picture drawn of an organization of native speakers teaching English. They are subject to criticism mainly for degrading Korea, doing drugs, forging diplomas, and chasing money. This reflects the negative attitude we have towards native speakers who come to Korea to teach English.

What do they think of Korea, Koreans, and Korean schools? We met wih 15 native speaker of English teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools in Korea.

Asked the weak point of Korean education, all of them replied, "students have no way to develop their own abilities." A high school teacher from Canada said, "because they are not taught to think critically the students seem to wind up not knowing what their own strong and weak points are... Korean education focusses on preparing students for exams, so I think it has much effect on improving teenagers' behavior."

On the subject of Korean students' English schoolwork, one teacher said, "the way I see it, Korean students have no self-confidence to think that they can be better at English... When you study English, of course you are going to make mistakes, but Korean students are afraid of mistakes and take a passive approach to speaking English. It hurts them."

Asked whether their lessons help Korean students to develop their English abilities just five teachers said yes. "At first the students avoided me, but eventually they would try to come up and say something to me and were clearly working hard, and it seemed to be working," one said. But the other ten were unhappy, saying things such as, "teaching with large class sizes of 40 students or more, you can't really make a difference." Another criticized the uncooperative attitude of co-teachers: "When get almost no feedback from the head teacher about whether my lessons were good or bad, how am I supposed to know how to help the students?"

(Read the rest at the link)

[Xuanzang]

Duh. Most teachers figure that out within the first 6 months.

[kinerry]

It's pretty much true, and a huge explanation for the development of most countries.

Math related fields always prosper in countries that don't foster critical thinking. All math is, is a set of facts that don't change.

Critical thinking usually comes to fully developed nations at the cost of math related fields.

Think about it.

[ytuque]

[Seoul'n'Corea]

[Konglishman]

[kinerry]

[PatrickGHBusan]

Critical thinking is not at the forefront of education here. That is something that eventually will need to be adjusted. Then again I agree with the poster that said that it is up to Teachers to foster critical thinking through the activities they present in class. Korean students are quite capable of critical thinking...you just have to give them the chance to apply it.

Whats stopping you in your class?

Anyway the Korean education system has its flaws but that does not prevent a good teacher from doing something positive.....right?

As for math...the Korean kids I know in Public School in Canada (through friends and my wifes Korean friends) have ZERO trouble with geometry, math and other sciences and in fact consistently score top of the class. These are K-kids born in Korea that moved to Canada during or after elementary school....

The article does point to a relevant issue in education however.

[conrad2]

A Korean friend of mine went to four year university in the States and majored in math. He said that the first two years were very easy for him and that he was at the top of all his classes. He said once he got to upper level classes, he had to actually apply math and use critical thinking and not just plug in formulas. He struggled with this and was just a mediocre student from that point on. He said his education in Korea didnt prepare him for this.

[Horangi Munshin]

I had a good calculus teacher in my final year of high school. We had bi-weekly assignments that really tested us on what we had done in regular classes. Engineering type problems etc. A paragraph with a few figures and a something to solve. These weren't a few lines of calculations then choose A/B/C/D of course. It usually involved a few pages of calculations with explanations.

When I did my teacher training, it was mentioned many times that some Asian students had more difficulty with these word problem exercises.

[beercanman]

This "good at math" stuff only goes so far. It's a very broad field and can be very complex, and for people who are really good at it, it requires great creativity and ingenuity. For some reason, many of the greatest mathematicians were European.

[The Cosmic Hum]

[Konglishman]

[winterfall]

To clarify, its not critical thinking, its independent thinking. They can figure out problems fine, you just need to tell them first. But give them anything implicit and it doesn't matter how much you explain, they can't do it.

[Moldy Rutabaga]

We can describe American education as a system which promotes expansion of knowledge, and Korean education as one which values retention of knowledge.

I think if I asked my Korean freshmen which countries fought in World War II, they would have the correct answers right away. If I asked them, "How might the war have been different if Germany attacked Japan?" I would have twenty blank faces. They are not conditioned to that sort of speculative or abstract reasoning. I am not saying they can't ever do it or that a teacher can't nurture it, but it's not in their experience.

My freshmen when I taught as a grad student in the states would have no trouble with high-level argumentation. But it would have little factual basis. I would need to show them Europe on a map. Their knowledge would all be derived from Saving Private Ryan and Japanese anime. I would have sophisticated theories based on tanks with laser guns and women in plastic leather.