Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adam J]

Derrek -

Sounds a lot like an international school to me. Students at international schools usually don't score as well on tests, noteably Korea's SAT, but their English language skills, writing, critical thinking, and success at college stats are all better than the typical cram school kids'.

I'd rather be a smart kid with good social skills than a super smart kid with no social skills.

[mithridates]

Summerhill is quite the interesting place. Not only did I read the book Summerhill a few times in addition to A.S. Neill's other books in addition to his biography, but I also graduated from a high school based on Summerhill ( http://schools.cbe.ab.ca/b863/home.htm ) so I might even be an expert on the subject.
Neill never told any of his students to study something they didn't like, because he knew, as does anyone else, that after a year out of school one forgets all the unappliccable knowledge one has picked up. Nobody is lacking in a talent of their own, and most people will tend to work on that (and anything related to it) if given the chance. England also has university exams near the end of high school like in Korea and most other places, and though he never made the students study for them, they all knew that if they wanted to go to university that they would have to pass them, and if they wanted to study for the test the teachers and material were there, and he found that the kids would spend most of their time at the school working on what they wanted, and then two years or so before graduating would suddenly switch into test mode (perhaps upon advice from a friend, not because a teacher told them to) and they would pick up the content quite quickly and then go on to university.
That feeling that people have (and not just kids either) where they know that they should be doing something, but they still don't because 'f**k them even if it hurts me' is completely absent there. New students will often go through a period of 'rebellion' for a week or two where they refuse to go to class, find out that absolutely nobody is going to punish them for it, and then get bored and decide to actually try attending them because everybody else is and seems to enjoy it.