Korean Job Discussion Forums

[World Traveler]

No more high school jobs, middle school jobs are mostly gone, and now elementary is next.

What is happening? The elementary students' won't go to an English classroom; their homeroom teacher will teach them the English lesson inside their class. So no more Korean English teachers either.

Will the Korean English teachers lose their job? Nope; they'll become homeroom teachers, too.

Will the homeroom teachers be able to effectively teach English? At least for appearances sake, yes, absolutely.

The teachers' guides for the accompanying textbooks used in the public school are written in Korean. Hell, even the textbooks are filled with Korean. Most likely someone with no English ability at all would be able to navigate/ teach the class.

The accompanying DVD for the books (which each student gets as well to take home) has clear native speaker pronunciation for every single sentence written in the book- medium speed, slightly slower, and slightly faster. That's in addition to the cartoon flash animations and live acting dialogue videos.

Now that technology has drastically changed the curriculum (and even before that) native speakers are most useful at the grade levels where students are good enough (have enough vocabulary) to converse with a native speaker. But older levels got axed first. (And they are most likely never coming back.) Cuts have recently extended to elementary schools as well, with a designated Korean English teacher instructing the classes solo. Rural areas (suckier places to be) have been disproportionately spared, but now a new nationwide policy means all NETs at the elementary level will get the boot. I just confirmed this. It is true. Ask a Korean school worker if you don't believe me. Elementary school teachers, your days are numbered, and it's not like you can switch to middle or high school because those have gone away/are going away, too, so plan accordingly.

[nicwr2002]

So officially worse than Japan now...

[trueblue]

[World Traveler]

https://landofthemourningclam.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/study.png

[trueblue]

[gongbuhae]

[TheMeerkatLover]

This has been long coming.

The NET/GET in this country were essentially expected to perform miracles while at the same time being placed in a bureaucracy that prevented them from doing their jobs effectively, restricting their freedoms, limiting resources and accusing & treating them as potential criminals.

I sincerely hope the program disappears. It has failed to accomplish anything worthy other than providing thousands of people with a substandard salary while enduring unacceptable working conditions (ie: deskwarming & the countless other complaints featured over the past decade).

[ArabicTeacher]

I've seen more Chinese hagwons nowadays around my place.

[pmwhittier]

I believe what is being said here, but I would also like to have some concrete evidence of the claim. Is there a newspaper article(s) or government website (EPIK or GEPIK, perhaps?) that actually states what has been stated by the OP? I'd like to have something other than a cartoon to help me understand if this is an actual issue or just embellishment of the gradual decline of ESL.

[f12]

Was/is a huge waste of funds in the first place.
private tutoring/individual needs support is the only effective method

[wonkavite62]

This is an appallingly miserable thread, even if true. There, that smiley will at least make things look cheerful, whether they are or not.
But seriously, I disagree with the comment one person made about the whole NEET public school program being a waste of time and money. I think it has made some difference, and helped some students to show more interest in English than they would have done. We can bring a freer, more authentic, version of English, less controlled by the textbook. So why is the program being phased out?
Well, it's partly political. In 2007, Lee Myung Bak came to power. He and current president Park Geun Hye are from the same party. But when Lee became president, he promised to vastly expand the public school program and put a foreign teacher in every public school. But his aim; to make public school students [/b]fluent in English by 2012 was not achieved. It couldn't have been. Therefore the program was judged a failure. Of course we know that there is no way the students could have become fluent in English by 2012! Life isn't just like that. And I think that a lot of the criticisms of EPIK, SMOE, and so on, are based on this kind of false thinking. The Lee administration wanted big results FAST! Ppali, ppali! Quickly, quickly!
President Park has moved the Saenuri Party back to it's true conservative ideological instincts. She wants to shrink the state as much as possible. But Korea doesn't have much of a welfare state. There is limited social security for the elderly. So she has to cut education. She also wants to be different from the last president. She has planned to allow employers much greater power to hire and fire workers. She thinks this will increase employment. Will it? Anyone who has worked in a hagwon will know that things can be appallingly short-term, here. Some employers are already too good at firing people! People work long hours, and the average salary has been stationary for 10 years.
If Korea does go the way of Japan, it will be because this country is still stuck in the rapid development mode, of previous decades. The solutions may require more fundamental changes than increasing or decreasing government expenditure.
As for me, I do think that EPIK, GEPIK and SMOE can provide a useful service. We foreigners can help with English. But for that to happen programs like EPIK may need to be restructured, and our role changed to increasing fluency. I have lived in other countries where that has happened.

[wonkavite62]

This is an appallingly miserable thread, even if true. There, that smiley will at least make things look cheerful, whether they are or not.
But seriously, I disagree with the comment one person made about the whole NEET public school program being a waste of time and money. I think it has made some difference, and helped some students to show more interest in English than they would have done. We can bring a freer, more authentic, version of English, less controlled by the textbook. So why is the program being phased out?
Well, it's partly political. In 2007, Lee Myung Bak came to power. He and current president Park Geun Hye are from the same party. But when Lee became president, he promised to vastly expand the public school program and put a foreign teacher in every public school. But his aim; to make public school studentsfluent in English by 2012] was not achieved. It couldn't have been. Therefore the program was judged a failure. Of course we know that there is no way the students could have become fluent in English by 2012! Life isn't just like that. And I think that a lot of the criticisms of EPIK, SMOE, and so on, are based on this kind of false thinking. The Lee administration wanted big results FAST! Ppali, ppali! Quickly, quickly!
President Park has moved the Saenuri Party back to it's true conservative ideological instincts. She wants to shrink the state as much as possible. But Korea doesn't have much of a welfare state. There is limited social security for the elderly. So she has to cut education. She also wants to be different from the last president. She has planned to allow employers much greater power to hire and fire workers. She thinks this will increase employment. Will it? Anyone who has worked in a hagwon will know that things can be appallingly short-term, here. Some employers are already too good at firing people! People work long hours, and the average salary has been stationary for 10 years.
If Korea does go the way of Japan, it will be because this country is still stuck in the rapid development mode, of previous decades. The solutions may require more fundamental changes than increasing or decreasing government expenditure.
As for me, I do think that EPIK, GEPIK and SMOE can provide a useful service. We foreigners can help with English. But for that to happen programs like EPIK may need to be restructured, and our role changed to increasing fluency. I have lived in other countries where that has happened.
[/b]

[Stain]

[Stain]

[ArabicTeacher]

I can confirm this. My Korean wife knows some teachers in elementary schools and they have talked about this.