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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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 Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:32 am Post subject: |
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| Paji eh Wong wrote: |
So we've knocked the teachers, the owners, and the customers. We're leaving out one important group in all of this. I think Korean Immigration plays a role in how bad the EFL industry is. I'm lazy, so you're getting point form.
 Having a school own your visa, supply your housing, and pay for your airfare makes it difficult for foriegners to change from bad schools to good, and gives uncompetative schools one more opportunity to prop themselves up.
Making it nearly impossible for teachers to work part time legally means that there is a built-in market for illegal work, and a built-in market for bribes.
Being opaque in their rules and application of those rules means that a lot of people can break immigration law with out knowing, enlarging the bribe market.
Immigration standards to get an E2 visa are assinine. Why does my BA in whatever make me more qualified than a highschool graduate? Wouldn't it be better to higher an experienced educator from India or Jamaica than someone with no qualifications or experience from a G7 country? |
That's not Immigration per se. That's the government. They make the rules and Immigration just enforces them. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:40 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| That's not Immigration per se. That's the government. They make the rules and Immigration just enforces them. |
"Immigration," "the government," "hogwon owners," "recruiters," "hogwon mothers," "hogwon children."
All of these things are products of Korean society, and, indeed, are run and staffed by people who were born of Korean mothers and fathers, educated in Korea's educational and social system, etc.
It's the world that they create and recreate everyday through millions of individual decisions and actions everyday...When you isolate them into distinct groups, that glosses over this. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:46 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| That's not Immigration per se. That's the government. They make the rules and Immigration just enforces them. |
"Immigration," "the government," "hogwon owners," "recruiters," "hogwon mothers," "hogwon children."
All of these things are products of Korean society, and, indeed, are run and staffed by people who were born of Korean mothers and fathers, educated in Korea's educational and social system, etc.
It's the world that they create and recreate everyday through millions of individual decisions and actions everyday...When you isolate them into distinct groups, that glosses over this. |
But the above groups that you mentioned are not the same. They ARE distinct groups like it or not. |
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ed4444
Joined: 12 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 2:30 am Post subject: |
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One of my private students (haha! up yours immigration!) owns a piano hagwon. From teaching her I realised that the piano teaching business is just as corrupt and shallow as the English teaching one.
I have heard many stories of completely useless teachers being hired just because they came from the right uni and can therefore attract students.
There is a good analogy here between uni background in this industry and country of origin in the hagwon industry.
I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation and no consumer intelligence.
Korea needs enforcable standards in the private education industry and familes that recognise the features of a good education establishment.
I don't expect to see anything change in the near future though. There are too many people making too much money from the current system for it to be overhauled. |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 2:58 am Post subject: |
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| TUM wrote: |
| By your logic if Canada excuted 10 innocent people (if it had the death penalty) and if Korea excuted 100 innocent people Korea would be worse? |
Korea. That's my point. They both suck, but Korea sucks more as a difference of degree.
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| Look at America. Enron, World Com and others. That is corruption on a huge scale. Is there anything comparable in Korea? |
Off the top of my head, there was Ambassador Hong taking a USD$ 10 million dollar bribe from Samsung, or SK Global scandal at well over a billion dollars and which almost took down a few banks with it.
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| are you just going to make unfounded statements? |
See, that's the thing. Again, I'm going to refer you to the meta-survey I quoted earlier. There was a big, big difference between Canada and Korea, or the US and Korea. This just may be my opinion, but it seems to be shared by a lot of people.
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
That's not Immigration per se. That's the government. They make the rules and Immigration just enforces them. |
Fair enough. Points 1 & 4 I can see as the government's rules, with 3 & 4 being immigration. Its my understanding that there are laws on the books allowing legal part time work, but that its impossible to get.
Actually, I wonder who made the rules, an elected official or an appointed civil servant. Either way, it doesn't mater much. |
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Paji eh Wong
Joined: 03 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:23 am Post subject: |
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| ed4444 wrote: |
I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation and no consumer intelligence.
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You know what? I'd blame it solely on the consumer. If we had smart active consumers, I think this market would regulate itself. And a lot of us would be out of jobs.
That maybe the most depressing thing that I've learned in Korea. In the market place, consumers get what they deserve. I don't think its fair to say that any individual Korean student should get a bad education, but on the whole, Korean's get the education they deserve. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:30 am Post subject: |
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| Paji eh Wong wrote: |
| TUM wrote: |
| By your logic if Canada excuted 10 innocent people (if it had the death penalty) and if Korea excuted 100 innocent people Korea would be worse? |
Korea. That's my point. They both suck, but Korea sucks more as a difference of degree.
| Quote: |
| Look at America. Enron, World Com and others. That is corruption on a huge scale. Is there anything comparable in Korea? |
Off the top of my head, there was Ambassador Hong taking a USD$ 10 million dollar bribe from Samsung, or SK Global scandal at well over a billion dollars and which almost took down a few banks with it.
| Quote: |
| are you just going to make unfounded statements? |
See, that's the thing. Again, I'm going to refer you to the meta-survey I quoted earlier. There was a big, big difference between Canada and Korea, or the US and Korea. This just may be my opinion, but it seems to be shared by a lot of people.
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
That's not Immigration per se. That's the government. They make the rules and Immigration just enforces them. |
Fair enough. Points 1 & 4 I can see as the government's rules, with 3 & 4 being immigration. Its my understanding that there are laws on the books allowing legal part time work, but that its impossible to get.
Actually, I wonder who made the rules, an elected official or an appointed civil servant. Either way, it doesn't mater much. |
Aha a difference of degree. Then by your logic America would suck worse because its corruption (Enron and WorldCom) cost FAR more than Korea's SK Gobal and the Ambassador one. This goes back to the 10 innocent vs the 100 innocent analogy. |
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joe_doufu
Joined: 09 May 2005
Location: Elsewhere
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:31 am Post subject: |
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A primary problem is that the students don't want to learn English, and their parents don't care one way or the other, but they spend hours a day for a decade studying it without wanting to learn.
I think they should ban English education for children under 21 in this country. THEN we'd see the youngsters getting motivated to learn. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:43 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Look at America. Enron, World Com and others. That is corruption on a huge scale. Is there anything comparable in Korea? |
"Corruption," in its narrowest sense, usually refers specifically to govt officials misusing public funds or accepting bribes. Your Enron and World.com examples are part of a wider use of the term, and are not invalid. But corruption in the sense of African elites taking donated clothes and food, meant to be distributed to the needy, and then selling them for a profit, or corruption in the sense of relief funds being likely to disappear in the areas affected by the tsunami, or corruption in the sense of Mexican and Central American police officers and departments and institutionalized bribery, or corruption in the sense of the Brazilian judge in Sao Paolo who had been entrusted to handle public works funds meant to upgrade the public transportation system (because no one else in the govt knew where else to keep this money secure), but who ran off to Miami and bought a condo on the beach and an Italian sports car instead...etc., etc., this kind of corruption we don't see too much in the U.S., no.
I'm not familiar enough with Korean politics to say whether it's here or it isn't, that is, on the out-of-control scale that I reference above. But I've heard enough about Korean Immigration's standard behavior (bribes) to suspect that, yes, in the sense that I'm using the word, Korea is much more corrupt than the U.S.
Also, drawing attn to a very few, exceptional, but highly publicized cases, does not prove your point. When it occurs in the U.S. on the scale of Enron or World.com, it's international news, and people go to jail. When these things happen in Korea, isn't just seen as par for the course? |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:54 am Post subject: |
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ed4444 made this point:
"I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation..."
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"One of my private students (haha! up yours immigration!)..."
Thank you. Here is a clear regulation. It is clearly bad, and commonly ignored.
Regulation is the problem. There is so much, nit-picky, god-awful regulation of the hogwan industry and foreign English teachers, that it is very difficult for a school (hogwan) with a good, popular program to set up and expand. These rules (like the visa rules for teachers and still others most teachers are unaware of for hogwans) actually prevent good programs, which are probably more popular but less profitable in the short run, from expanding and displacing the bad programs.
Koreans are a little more corrupt, at present, than we are used to. But that isn't the problem.
Mothers maybe don't know English very well, but they do talk among themselves, and when there is a good program in town they will swarm to it. At my hogwan, which is considered the best, we can add a class or a teacher and tell one mother. The word spreads, the phone rings. We have a waiting list. We never advertise. Every class is full.
Good hogwans can drive the market to get better. We are doing just that. Others are trying to copy us. We could expand and change the industry faster, but the goverment rules, laws, taxes and regulations make that very difficult. So, we have to grow slowly.
The industry can be reformed through deregulation and competition.
Instead of whining, try this. Find a sincere person, a current owner or a soon-to-be new owner of a hogwan. That's the hard part, but I did it on my third try. Now, since you really are a great teacher and you really do care, YOU make the program. All of it. Write the materials and the tests. Choose the books. Beginning to end. Make a deal to share the risk with the owner. Less students/less pay. More students/more pay. There are many details to talk over. Don't bother to think about your hours of thankless labor for a year or two. Keep your expenses low. Always give your students more than you promise. Put teaching/education first. Interview the students yourself. The owner should interview the mothers. Do not admit students or mothers who are not serious. Kick out students who have bad behavior, skip classes or don't study. When you expand, hire good teachers and train them. This will drive out the bad hogwans. (It might kill a few of us from overwork, but it will fix the system.) Now if only the government would get out of the way! |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:03 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
ed4444 made this point:
"I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation..."
and
"One of my private students (haha! up yours immigration!)..."
Thank you. Here is a clear regulation. It is clearly bad, and commonly ignored.
Regulation is the problem. There is so much, nit-picky, god-awful regulation of the hogwan industry and foreign English teachers, that it is very difficult for a school (hogwan) with a good, popular program to set up and expand. These rules (like the visa rules for teachers and still others most teachers are unaware of for hogwans) actually prevent good programs, which are probably more popular but less profitable in the short run, from expanding and displacing the bad programs.
Koreans are a little more corrupt, at present, than we are used to. But that isn't the problem.
Mothers maybe don't know English very well, but they do talk among themselves, and when there is a good program in town they will swarm to it. At my hogwan, which is considered the best, we can add a class or a teacher and tell one mother. The word spreads, the phone rings. We have a waiting list. We never advertise. Every class is full.
Good hogwans can drive the market to get better. We are doing just that. Others are trying to copy us. We could expand and change the industry faster, but the goverment rules, laws, taxes and regulations make that very difficult. So, we have to grow slowly.
The industry can be reformed through deregulation and competition.
Instead of whining, try this. Find a sincere person, a current owner or a soon-to-be new owner of a hogwan. That's the hard part, but I did it on my third try. Now, since you really are a great teacher and you really do care, YOU make the program. All of it. Write the materials and the tests. Choose the books. Beginning to end. Make a deal to share the risk with the owner. Less students/less pay. More students/more pay. There are many details to talk over. Don't bother to think about your hours of thankless labor for a year or two. Keep your expenses low. Always give your students more than you promise. Put teaching/education first. Interview the students yourself. The owner should interview the mothers. Do not admit students or mothers who are not serious. Kick out students who have bad behavior, skip classes or don't study. When you expand, hire good teachers and train them. This will drive out the bad hogwans. (It might kill a few of us from overwork, but it will fix the system.) Now if only the government would get out of the way! |
Very interesting POV and observations. But how would you answer the experienced and intelligent veterans of hagwons on Dave's who insist that the hagwon industry is doomed to remain the failure it currently is unless the governnment steps in and flexes its regulatory muscle? That the ogrish directors, hellish working/living conditions, precarious finances, unstandardised and often useless franchise-forced study materials, criminal behaviour (non-payment of salaries, year-end bonuses, severance, etc.) and on and on, are not the by-products of government regulation ... but rather the lack of strict enforcement thereof?
You know more about this business than I ever will sitting here reading about it. But calling for less regulatory policing of the hagwon industry... Lord, that's astounding. Isn't it? |
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Pyongshin Sangja
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: I love baby!
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:26 am Post subject: |
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| The tools are in place, the Korean Constitution is the same as the American one. Only thing, it's in English. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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I'm not sure if regulation will help or not. It would depend on what kind of regulation and how it was implimented.
If it's going to be a bunch more BS about classroom sizes and number of classrooms...........then I think it's a waste of time.
If it's going to deal with making sure teachers get paid, and that the school has books ..........then it might help. (might) |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
ed4444 made this point:
"I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation..."
and
"One of my private students (haha! up yours immigration!)..."
Thank you. Here is a clear regulation. It is clearly bad, and commonly ignored.
Regulation is the problem. There is so much, nit-picky, god-awful regulation of the hogwan industry and foreign English teachers, that it is very difficult for a school (hogwan) with a good, popular program to set up and expand. These rules (like the visa rules for teachers and still others most teachers are unaware of for hogwans) actually prevent good programs, which are probably more popular but less profitable in the short run, from expanding and displacing the bad programs.
Koreans are a little more corrupt, at present, than we are used to. But that isn't the problem.
Mothers maybe don't know English very well, but they do talk among themselves, and when there is a good program in town they will swarm to it. At my hogwan, which is considered the best, we can add a class or a teacher and tell one mother. The word spreads, the phone rings. We have a waiting list. We never advertise. Every class is full.
Good hogwans can drive the market to get better. We are doing just that. Others are trying to copy us. We could expand and change the industry faster, but the goverment rules, laws, taxes and regulations make that very difficult. So, we have to grow slowly.
The industry can be reformed through deregulation and competition.
Instead of whining, try this. Find a sincere person, a current owner or a soon-to-be new owner of a hogwan. That's the hard part, but I did it on my third try. Now, since you really are a great teacher and you really do care, YOU make the program. All of it. Write the materials and the tests. Choose the books. Beginning to end. Make a deal to share the risk with the owner. Less students/less pay. More students/more pay. There are many details to talk over. Don't bother to think about your hours of thankless labor for a year or two. Keep your expenses low. Always give your students more than you promise. Put teaching/education first. Interview the students yourself. The owner should interview the mothers. Do not admit students or mothers who are not serious. Kick out students who have bad behavior, skip classes or don't study. When you expand, hire good teachers and train them. This will drive out the bad hogwans. (It might kill a few of us from overwork, but it will fix the system.) Now if only the government would get out of the way! |
Very interesting post. What exactly are the 'other' regulations that get in the way?
If the government allowed foreigners to set up and run a foreign language school by themselves I could see the potential for a serious shake-up of the industry. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
ed4444 made this point:
"I would blame it on a lack of clear regulation..."
and
"One of my private students (haha! up yours immigration!)..."
Thank you. Here is a clear regulation. It is clearly bad, and commonly ignored.
Regulation is the problem. There is so much, nit-picky, god-awful regulation of the hogwan industry and foreign English teachers, that it is very difficult for a school (hogwan) with a good, popular program to set up and expand.
<snip> |
Sounds good. Mothers seem to appreciate and know the difference between good and bad private tutors (ahem, so I heard from a friend of a distant acquaintance  ) so in theory they ought to know a good hagwon from a bad one (though I've yet to see it).
I don't think regulation per se is a bad thing. If regulation was designed to uphold standards of teaching and good business practice I'd say that was a good thing. But regulation in this country seems either pointless red tape designed to keep bureaucrats in work and citizens under government control, or designed solely to ensure that the government gets its cut from this highly profitable industry. Only those with money and/or connections get to be wonjangnims too; industry knowledge and nous are made irrelevant. All IMHO of course, hagwon regs are designed to let the top strata exploit the rest, like everything else in this country. |
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