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blunder1983
Joined: 12 Apr 2005
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 Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, its great to hear the tyranny of hagwons might be coming to an end. Now if parents can get it into their heads its the kids responsibility to listen NOT the teachers and maybe the education system might start edging to normality.
I dont think parents will let their kids ever be kids here though, if there is the slightest chance they can do better and it means another 6 hours of work in a day then they'll make them do it.
I find this aspect of korea by far the most depressing.  |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
This is all interesting, especially the current drop out experience of the afterschool programs indicated by Plattwaz. This might look bad for hogwans initially, but perhaps it will have the opposite effect. This could just be one more nail in the coffin of the public school system in Korea. Once parents see that it's the public schools that are dumbing down their kids, they'll run in even greater numbers to the hogwans, more specifically, the good hogwans.
Parents in Korea do learn. Over time the word gets out as to which hogwan programs are good and bad. My hogwan has a student waiting list. Parents wait months to get in. Those who can get a spot in less than six months count themselves very lucky.
In addition, our interview system and testing experience has repeatedly shown, and we explain this to the parents, that the English instruction in the Korean schools is so bad that it actually LOWERS the English ability and levels of the students. Most parents confirm that they agree with this assessment and indeed, they already new that the public school English programs actually lower the level of the students who have previously studied in good hogwans or overseas.
The current generation of Korean English teachers can't speak English. They teach by translation of words and sentences even though the words and sentences they are teaching are wrong, mistranslated and in some cases, have opposite meanings. Even movie titles and subtitles are full of translation errors here.
This new afterschool program might hurt the "ipshi" hogwans that try to teach every subject. And it will certainly hurt the Korean private English teachers who can't speak English either. But, it won't hurt good hogwans who have only native English speakers on their staff. It'll take at least one more generation of hard study before Korea has enough Koreans who speak English to teach themselves. And the public school system English classes, even with native speakers, have too many students and too few hours to compete. |
Agreed. The curriculum of the after-school programs are modelling ipshi hogwans, not the language hogwans. If this was successful on a national level (and remember, we're talking about another hapless ministry of education initiative here), the most that english hogwans would see would be having their start times pushed back by a few hours and perhaps stretching to later in the night.
I also don't get why you guys are signalling that this is the death of hagwons. Does that mean that the thriving kindy hagwon industry is kaput? What about all adults that go to Pagoda, English Channel, YBM, etc...? Hagwons are here to stay, even if the MoE reinvented itself to be a world-class, hyper-efficient government body and provided great education. Why? The insatiable competitiveness of Korean mothers for their children to excel and get into the limited enrollment at top universities and Samsung/LG/Daewoo jobs.
It'll just make the ipshi market more competitive to outperform their new public school competitors.
As for the visa questions about who's going to farm their foreign teachers to go work at the public ipshi's, well that's pretty obvious, isn't it? Last year, the MoE had previously announced aggressive plans to hire english speakers in every middle school by 2010. So, those guys can likely expect to have their day extended by a few hours. |
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khyber
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Compunction Junction
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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hm... my post didn't make it up.
my WJN is trying to force me to go to that...i live near busan. I told her i was willing to go with all of the ipshee teachers up to seoul but i would NOT set foot in that protest. Me thinks there will be fireworks (AND i have a gig in masan on saturday so no classes that day for me....... rough).
i don't think she quite GETS the idea of not being able to force people to go to a political rally.
what makes me laugh is, if the government INCREASED the taxes and closed down hagwons, students could SAVE that money; increase DRAMATICALLY the number of teachers and reduce class sizes. I mean, if parents are THROWING away two-eight hundreds grand a month on classes, why not give it to the government and make the education system itself better?
oh wait! I know, because having kids unsupervised from 4 o'clock until 11 at night will pretty much triple the crime rate.
:wink: |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| khyber wrote: |
hm... my post didn't make it up.
my WJN is trying to force me to go to that...i live near busan. I told her i was willing to go with all of the ipshee teachers up to seoul but i would NOT set foot in that protest. Me thinks there will be fireworks (AND i have a gig in masan on saturday so no classes that day for me....... rough).
i don't think she quite GETS the idea of not being able to force people to go to a political rally.
what makes me laugh is, if the government INCREASED the taxes and closed down hagwons, students could SAVE that money; increase DRAMATICALLY the number of teachers and reduce class sizes. I mean, if parents are THROWING away two-eight hundreds grand a month on classes, why not give it to the government and make the education system itself better?
oh wait! I know, because having kids unsupervised from 4 o'clock until 11 at night will pretty much triple the crime rate.
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Just tell her that participating in a public protest violates the terms of your visa. Tell her to call immigration and see what they think of a foreigner doing what she wants you to do. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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| plattwaz wrote: |
Many (actually, I think all but one) of my friends are working in the Gyeonggi after school programs this year.
Not ONE of their programs has actually been successful, with only about 20 - 30% of the students remaining in the program, of those who started in March.
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Huh? The number of students coming to my classes has actually increased. Class # 1. Then: 10 students. Now: 14.
Class #2. Then: 16 students. Now: 18
Class #3. Then: 18 students. Now: 22
Then again the nearest hakwon is on the other side of town and most of the parents are rice farmers/factory workers (so say the Korean teachers at my public school.
I also know of at least 3 other foreign teachers working at public after-school programs who claim to have increased class size. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
This is all interesting, especially the current drop out experience of the afterschool programs indicated by Plattwaz. This might look bad for hogwans initially, but perhaps it will have the opposite effect. This could just be one more nail in the coffin of the public school system in Korea. Once parents see that it's the public schools that are dumbing down their kids, they'll run in even greater numbers to the hogwans, more specifically, the good hogwans.
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They still have to attend the public school. Just like students back home. They can't just drop out. And if the hakwons get in the way of the government, the government will just simply ban them. Not adult hakwons maybe, but children's.
What ever way it turns out, I am willing to bet that the staying power of the public school system is FAR FAR greater than that of hakwons. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject: |
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It will also be interesting to see what effect the elimination of Saturday school has. I'm guessing that a lot more hogwans will open Sat-Sun programmes. A lot of my HS students already attend such things.
I can see the after-school elementary thing working out quite easily if they simply employ foreigners 9-5 with most lessons taught from 2-5. Farming out hogwan teachers to elementary schools probably just won't work in the long term. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
It will also be interesting to see what effect the elimination of Saturday school has. I'm guessing that a lot more hogwans will open Sat-Sun programmes. A lot of my HS students already attend such things.
I can see the after-school elementary thing working out quite easily if they simply employ foreigners 9-5 with most lessons taught from 2-5. Farming out hogwan teachers to elementary schools probably just won't work in the long term. |
The Sat-Sun and farming out of hakwon teachers would make hakwon VERY unpopular. They would have a LOT of trouble finding people to work there. Maybe some foreigners who want to earn a lot of cash will do it. But I can't see most foreigners here doing it. And to do this long term you would have to have incredible staying power to avoid burning out.
7 days a week?
And extra lessons at the elementary school on top of that?
I agree that it just won't work. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
The Sat-Sun and farming out of hakwon teachers would make hakwon VERY unpopular. They would have a LOT of trouble finding people to work there. Maybe some foreigners who want to earn a lot of cash will do it. But I can't see most foreigners here doing it. And to do this long term you would have to have incredible staying power to avoid burning out.
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I think the demand will be to have: (a) hogwan teachers who can work Sat-Sun and (b) someone to teacher at elementary schools 2-5. No way can the same people do both. That's why I think that elementary schools will end up hiring foreigners themselves for (b) if they want something reliable. Only the larger hogwans who have enough foreigners that they can rotate will be able to manage (a), like some larger adult academies do. |
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JeJuJitsu
Joined: 11 Sep 2005
Location: McDonald's
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:00 am Post subject: |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| It will also be interesting to see what effect the elimination of Saturday school has. |
Who's eliminating Saturday school? Did I miss this news? |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:28 am Post subject: |
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| JeJuJitsu wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| It will also be interesting to see what effect the elimination of Saturday school has. |
Who's eliminating Saturday school? Did I miss this news? |
Yes, you did. This year the government has made one Saturday a month a day off and most schools have a club activity day on another Saturday, leaving two lesson days. Next year (2 March) students will have two Saturdays a month off. The year after, Saturday school will be completely illiminated.
I don't know if you've ever been at a school on Saturday (they only have morning - no afternoon - lessons) but not much seems to be getting done anyways. |
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JeJuJitsu
Joined: 11 Sep 2005
Location: McDonald's
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:41 am Post subject: |
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| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| JeJuJitsu wrote: |
| Yu_Bum_suk wrote: |
| It will also be interesting to see what effect the elimination of Saturday school has. |
Who's eliminating Saturday school? Did I miss this news? |
Yes, you did. This year the government has made one Saturday a month a day off and most schools have a club activity day on another Saturday, leaving two lesson days. Next year (2 March) students will have two Saturdays a month off. The year after, Saturday school will be completely illiminated.
I don't know if you've ever been at a school on Saturday (they only have morning - no afternoon - lessons) but not much seems to be getting done anyways. |
Wow, that's huge news--thanks. |
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Kimchieluver
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 8:19 am Post subject: |
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I actually think this protest will be useful. As stated earlier there is some sort of academy every block you walk down. That's a lot of business, money and teachers. The last thing the Korean government needs to do is rack up the unemployment stats. Hogkwans keep a lot of Koreans employed, some who will have to basically go to a job that requires no degree.. hence the ripple effect. I think this is a classical case of the finance minister and the education minister really not working together.
Some may argue that hogkwans are a waste of money. Some may argue that sports teams are a waste of money. The kicker is that they both can generate a heckuva lot of biz.
These are real jobs and real people that are going to lose them. I hope some of you had made friends at your old academies or institutes. There is a lot at stake here.
And for those who say "Yay! Kill the hogkwans! Lest we forget how many of us came here. I 'm no big fan of hogkwans but they did put a lot of money in my bank and food on my plate. I was making more in Canada, but if you think it was easier there in the biz world, you're sadly mistaken. Not to get off topic, but when you sign a contract in Canada as management, rarely are maximum hours worked or overtime mentioned. If you want to move up or even keep your job, you work extra hard just to keep your job or get that 100% comp level, promotion or bonus. It's different for unions of course. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Let's keep things in perspective. It's just one day. As with most Korean protests, it's a show of �츮 solidarity, and everyone forgets about it a few weeks later until another demonstration or Hyori scandal makes the news. No one is losing their job. No massive loss in tax revenue. No sky is falling. Besides, not all hogwans have affiliated membership with hogwan associations. For example, 35-40% of Daegu hogwans are not in the association and march to their own drumbeat, and a few of those have no idea nor could care less about that day, based on some of the feedback that I've gotten. |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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| jaganath69 wrote: |
| Methinks you are all too hasty in predicting the demise of the Hagwon. Given the competativeness of the education system and job markets here, Korean parents will always look for that extra edge for their children. |
Probably right. I seriously doubt the parents will take their kids out of the hagwons (8 to 10 students per class) to keep them in school longer (30-35 students per class). Besides, kids who take piano lessons, Tae Kwon Do, what not, probably will continue going to hagwons because of their schedule.
It all seems to me like a ploy to raise taxes. I doubt parents will fall for this one. |
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