Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Sector7G]

A call for reforming the education system, written by Se-Woong Koo, a former fellow and lecturer in Korean studies at Yale, and editor in chief of Korea Exposé, a news website launching later this month. He also taught at a Gangnam hagwon back in 2008, so I would not be surprised if he was an occasional Dave's reader.

Anyway, I submit this without comment - I just thought others might find it interesting.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/opinion/sunday/south-koreas-education-system-hurts-students.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0

An Assault Upon Our Children
South Korea’s Education System Hurts Students

.........."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. "

[jvalmer]

I'd start with restricting 'authoritative' punishment to behavioral issues. Not for not doing your homework. If a kid is lazy, let him be lazy and face the consequences when he gets into the workforce. Korea needs more laborers without degrees, who don't feel certain jobs are 'beneath' them.

[cmxc]

Korea's education system is an anachronism.

It was modeled off the Prussian school system where everyone memorizes the same things to pass a standardized test so that they would be prepared for a life of doing routine tasks for 12 hours days in factories.

The world has already changed. We don't need so many factory workers as we need knowledge workers, able to collaborate with global colleagues to create new business models and products.

Korea's entire education system is architected to prepare students to pass a college entrance exam. It's a brute force system with rewards for those who are able to memorize the most to pass a standardized multiple choice exam.

Korea is insuring its own future doom with its current education system because no one in the world needs brain-dead factory labor, especially given Korea's non-competitive labor costs relative to China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

The world needs creative people, able to sell ideas to global audiences, or create buy in for new ways of doing things. Koreans are so far behind the curve in this regard it's not funny.

Korea's current education system simply does not equip its graduates with the skills, competencies, and mindsets they will need to create prosperous futures for themselves, their employers, or the future businesses they need to create.

[FDNY]

CMXC, your opinion is absolute rubbish. If you want brain dead factory automatons, just look to the USA, where people think they can just skip post secondary education and do just fine. Unfortunately it leads to this: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/07/29/america-debt-loads/13152651/

Also, if you want a population that can barely read and write. Well. the good old USA is your choice. OECD ranking for literacy and numeracy:
South Korea 5th, USA 36th! (shameful) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/10488555/OECD-education-report-subject-results-in-full.html

[fosterman]

must be doing something right, because back home it's all the Asian students who are top of the class, and the Asian kids getting all the jobs.

social skills might be lacking, or the "COOL factor" but really, popular in highschool? cool in college? who cares..

[Chaparrastique]

[cmxc]

FDNY,
‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.’

Let’s briefly examine your claims:
1) Because fewer Americans are college grads, Americans are deadbeat ‘brain dead factory automatons’.

2) American OECED PISA test scores are much lower than Korean scores.

3) Samsung Electronics phones and Hyundai Heavy ships are the best-selling and most innovative products in the world.

4) Korea is within the top 3 nations globally for robot tech because they made a robot that can make cucumber salad.

5) Koreans are competitive because here is a list of 10 Korean firms.

FDNY, I don’t know you, but judging from your barely coherent and poorly written response, you strike me as mentally challenged.

How do any of your claims serve to either disagree with the NY Times opinion piece’s thesis about Korea’s education system being an assault on its students, or the comments I made that it fails to produce the kind of knowledge workers Korea needs?

You are simply being moronic if you claim that America does not produce more innovation, compared to Korea. In finance, pharmaceuticals, information technology, automotive, etc, etc. the US continues to demonstrate its unceasing global leadership.
IBM? Oracle? Intel? Apple? Microsoft? Google? Facebook? Salesforce.com? LinkedIn? Uber? AirBnB? eBay? Craigslist?
These firms have transformed our lives globally, and created whole new paradigms for interacting with our customers, employers, colleagues, friends, families, etc.

America is blessed with a system that rewards people even if they don’t go to college or graduate from college. However, that has nothing to do with Korea’s education system.

Further, have you been living in a cave? Korea is struggling with a household debt level that is among the highest in the world. A recent McKinsey report pointed out that for the average Korean family, after paying for real estate debts and private education expenses, there is less than zero cash left over. Koreans are going deeper and deeper into debt. You cannot claim that America’s debt problem is unique in this world, and especially compared to Koreans.

The OECD PISA test is SHIT! It cannot be relied upon as a valid measure of the educational attainment of students internationally. Koreans teach to the test! It is not a true apples to apples comparison, and the sheer number of American students compared to Korean students guarantees that the average score will revert toward the mean, resulting in much lower scores compared to a country like South Korea. We also know that Koreans take such global rankings much more seriously than Americans do, and this creates a much greater incentive for Koreans to skew reported results. It is also a multiple choice test, and this also does nothing to address the criticisms of Korea’s education system.

Samsung Electronics phones would be shit without Google Android. Further, Samsung Electronics is waging a major patent battle because it clearly stole design ideas from Apple. Look at Samsung’s phones before the iPhone and after its launch, and it’s so clear how much Samsung stole from Apple. Further, you can STFU about Samsung because I used to work in the Global Marketing team of Samsung Electronics. I know how much of their ‘innovation’ comes from reverse engineering competitor products. I have seen the way the company works and still keep in touch with numerous colleagues to this day. What Samsung did to the Japanese, Chinese companies are doing to them now. Why do you think Samsung’s profit fell by 20% in the most recent quarter?
Hyundai Heavy has the best selling/most innovative ships in the world? Again you are like an ostrich with your head in the sand. Hyundai Heavy just posted its worst quarterly loss in its history! Korea’s shipbuilding industry is cratering! There is massive over capacity and Chinese shipbuilding firms are eating Korean shipbuilders’ lunch!

In robot tech the US blows Korea out of the water again, but this also has nothing to do with Korea’s education system. Just look at the US DOD, or Google’s advances in its robotics portfolio companies.

Korean firms generally are not competitive, which is why the Korean government has done so much to attempt to protect so many of them from global competition. The state directed financing and strongly protectionist measures that enabled the Chaebol to arise can never be replicated. Even with all that protectionism, only a few Korean industries arose to compete globally – Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors. Korea’s industries must compete on the global stage now, and Chinese firms are capable of overtaking them in the very near future. That is why Korea’s education system must adapt to prepare Koreans for the future, not keep them in a strangle-hold locked into rote memorization for standardized tests.

You have no idea what you are talking about and it’s frightening that someone like you is in a position to negatively influence young kids. Use your position to help them, not keep them locked into a cramming hell that serves no practical purpose.

[Steelrails]

In my experience, SOME people who rant about Korean education and creativity and all that usually are LS&A majors who sneered at math, science, and Engineering classes back home, mostly due to a superiority/inferiority complex relating to their lack of skill in those areas and their dimmer prospects for employment. You'll either hear them talking about how all the truly smart people who "get it" are in their major (psych, poli sci, sociology, etc) or that they aren't a sell out (social work, pottery, etc.)

Of course they come over to Korea and despite having accomplished nothing of note assume that they are smarter and "get it" more than the collective 50 million of Korea. Often they'll use ridiculous justifications (liking skateboarding, music taste, being a fan of George Carlin, etc.) to show how above everything they are. If not that then they live vicariously through the accomplishments of people long dead or whom they've had no contact to somehow elevate themselves to that level. "They don't have a Shakespeare or Steve Jobs" as though they themselves somehow are responsible for the success of those people or are the descendants of their tradition, despite the fact that they couldn't name half of Shakespeare's plays or program a line of code. This isn't even getting to the fact that they themselves aren't that creative and what they do create is often junk because they either lack talent or the base of skills (often learned through rote memorization and repetition) that enable them to excel.

Why their hatred of the system? Because it suggests that their failure was due to some things that they didn't do- Study long, study hard, memorize, be competitive, and get your math and science down. Yeah, you should have had your parents be strict, sit you down at the table, made you read the book, and you should have pressured yourself to get good grades. You should have spent an hour memorizing something. You should have put more effort into your pre-college exams. You shouldn't have gone out and played around and partied and should have spent it studying. You should have fought tooth and nail to get the best grade in the class instead of just giving up on ever being the best. Maybe some extra private lessons would have been good for you.

Seeing any kind of success linked to any of those things bothers those people because with it is the idea that the reason they aren't at the top isn't because of "the system" or whatever, it's because they effd up when they were in school and college, and its all on them for their outcome. They aren't special, they aren't that talented, and they should have worked a lot harder.

Of course a lot of other people who complain about Korea's education system and the like are CEOs and Harvard professor types who have certainly excelled. However most of them tend to see things as Korea losing out on some degrees of efficiency and excellence, as opposed to the ranters who characterize everything in Korea as a failure. For them it's seeing something that gets by when it could be great, or is great with wasted energy.

[FDNY]

cmxc, you prattle on like some delusional meth head with a grade ten education. Obviously the US has a few more companies. It is 6-7 times bigger than Korea with 200 years or relative peace and prosperity behind it. Korea has gone from nothing to having global powerhouses in 40 years. As for the PISA test, maybe you should call out the OECD on that one. As for robotics, I'm not talking about armed drones that kill innocent children or armed droids to gun down Mexicans.

[cj1976]

This thread has turned into a "My dad can beat up your dad" dick-waving contest. Going back to the article, there is obviously some truth to it. Too much pressure, long hours, sleep deprivation, too many unnecessary subjects in the curriculum etc. I think we can all agree those are areas that need to be addressed.

[FriendlyDaegu]

[cj1976]

[PRagic]

There is a paradigm shift coming about in the Korean education system, an attempt to make it less teacher centric with increased emphasis on student aspirations and abilities. This was part of a plenary session on education reform given in Singapore recently by a Korean math education scholar.

[radcon]

[PRagic]

Has to start somewhere and sometime, though. And what many consider one of the most prestigious high schools in Korea has an uber flexible curriculum. They place more students in global top tier universities and a SKY schools than just about any other school in the nation. The place is like a college campus and the kids are pretty darn impressive.