Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

[Adventurer]

[nate1983]

[Michael_75]

I agree with the article - I can't believe how much money Korean parents spend on English education which is mostly ineffective. Stressed, uninterested children, sent from hagwon to hagwon, have their affective filter set so high that it's unsurprising how little they learn. Add to that unqualified teachers who have no idea about how a language is acquired (no, you don't make the students repeat sentences over and over) and you may as well set fire to the money. Hagwon directors, who are often not even educators, don't care how effective the classes are, as long as they keep collecting tuition.

Foreign languages aren't for every student, many of them will never achieve proficiency and many of them don't need or want to. It seems pointless for most parents to keep wasting money.

I'm not sure what the solution is, or even whether the situation will change, however, but I would like to see articles such as this given real consideration.

[comm]

[blm]

[warmachinenkorea]

[Fat_Elvis]

[definitely maybe]

[The Floating World]

As little as I'd ever shoo away the hand that feeds me - they might as well cut costs. I just took over from a wannanim that was at the hakwan for 18 months and put 100% into her kids. They still have trouble telling me how the weather is and what their hobbies are. Korea spends the most on esl in the world and recieves some of the lowest test scores. Those numbers don;t make sense. Why not just spend less and still get the same low test scores anyway?

Consider and discuss.

[warmachinenkorea]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Unposter]

This a complex problem and some of the responses here tend to be far too simplistic and too subjective to really deal with the issue.

Here are some points to consider:

1. Much of this problem has to do with the fact that there is no concensus on the need and the value of learning and being able to use English in Korean society. Some of this lack of concensus has to do with questions of identity and national character. Some of it is political between globalists and isolationists and between a Western focus or an Eastern focus. Some of it is just personal interest and social class interest.

2. Since the Korean War, people who could communicate in English were in high demand and often had advantages in securing better paying positions. Such people were able to secure resources from the U.S. military and the U.S. government and they eventually had access to American education, technology and business know-how.

3. Being able to speak English was considered a prestige language. It meant that you had the economic ability and the requisite education to learn English. English was learned in private schools, often run by American missionaries, the U.S. military or even in the U.S. itself. Korean elite were packaged off to U.S. universities and returned to Korea to take on high level positions.

4. Soon, a whole industry - private academies - formed around the idea that even middle class Koreans could learn English as well and be able to take advantage of increased economic opportunities.

5. Learning English was not a real focus of public education; though English was taught as a second language. Learning English was a focus of private education. Only those who wanted to learn and only those whose parents wanted their children to learn spent money on that education.

6. Korea most definitely needs people of the professional and governing class to be able to understand and speak English. Some of it is for business. Korea is an export driven economy. The domestic economy can not support the industrial output of Korea. Korean economic success is built on selling their products to other countries. Some of it is for government reasons. If the Korean government wants to communicate with the rest of the world it is going to have to either speak English, Chinese, French, Spanish or Arabic. Some of it is for the education of professionals. The first doctors trained by Western medicine learned from missionaries. They had to be able to speak English and they learned from English language textbooks. To this day, much of the study in medical schools still use English - and the same is true for other professions as well - if you want to be a lawyer, an Engineer, an accountant, work in the airline industry, you need to learn English. Korean academics have to learn an international language in order to get their ideas into internationally recognized journals (as do American academics).

7. Now, does every farmer and family store owner really need to know English? Probably not. But, if they want their children to be anything other than farmers and family store owners than they better learn.

8. The question is does the state pay to have equal opportunity or do you leave it to individuals to pay for the education themselves. This is part of the current debate.

9. It has only been in the last 4 or 5 years, that Korea has put a large amount of resources into public education teaching English. And, obviously, the results have been contested. I get the feeling that the Korean government does not want to use the money on public education. I am sure that the Private Acadamies would like to see public schools get out of the business. Parents don't really know what to do because they have been told so many different things.

10. Until there is some concensus on how English should be learned, where it should be learned and how much it should be learned, English education is going to continue to be a political football to be kicked around.

11. Personally, I think English should become a second official language in Korea. Like in Singapore, Korean schools need to integrate both languages (Korean and English) into the curriculum. There will probably be a lot of hardship and bellyaching for a generation but the long term results will be much better for Korea.

12. Korea is a small country and speaking a language that no one else in the world speaks is a great disadvantage to them. Establishing a second official language and an education system to match seems to be the best way to keep Korean identity and to still be able to communicate with the rest of the world.

13. Lastly, I guess I kind of forgot, but Private Acadamies are for the most part very effective (at least the good ones) at what they do which is mostly test prep. What private acadamies focus on, they are usually quite effective and most Koreans are very capable of learning to speak English if they make the effort. Private acadamies are only a waste of money if the child wastes their opportunity which kids being kids sometimes do.

[ThingsComeAround]

[warmachinenkorea]

What would the economy of Korea be like if there were no English hagwons?