|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Josh_Nyc
Joined: 09 Jan 2004
|
 Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:22 am Post subject: How do the Koreans do it? Academically. |
 |
|
I remember back in high school in new york, there were 2 brothers who came directly from korea. Didn't know a word of English. I remember thinking to myself these guys won't learn english in time to get into a decent college. Well, guess what? They both scored in the 1400's on their SAT's and ended up going to columbia. Crushing my measly 1050. They even scored higher on the verbal section than me! What's up with that? how freakin embarrassing.
Do Koreans just have a quicker learning curve? I've also noticed that during my teaching in korea, students tend to pick things up much faster than your average kid. My nieces and nephews are still struggling to string words into a sentence. Is it the kimchi or the beating that goes on at home when they don't study? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:25 am Post subject: |
|
|
Family friends' kids did pretty much the same thing- (i/e)mmigrated to Canada and within a year were at the top of the honour roll in their high school... I think they were pretty good even by their former Korean high school standards, but they had never lived abroad in an English speaking country before- quite a feat if you ask me.
Last edited by Bulsajo on Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:06 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
They just study a lot.
When I went to university I worked in the Library. Sometimes I'd have to work Friday evenings until the Library closed. Friday nights we might as well have called Asian Night at the Library. Only Asians in there. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
crazylemongirl
Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Location: almost there...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:05 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Coffeecup wrote: |
| But no, it's not about "who studies alot" and who doesn't. It's about the fact that indeed there is "race" and they do differ extensively. |
actually things are a lot more complicated than you want allude to. but i figure there is not point in arguing with you over whether ones DNA determines what sort of person you should be
clg |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
You can't seperate race from culture in this context. There may be some genetic propensity going on, but I call on you Coffeecup to provide a sourse, sinse your claim is controvertial. I'm not prepared to take you at your word on that.
What will have a clear effect of academic performance is the way a culture supports study and learning in general. Koreans have study discipline, and good study habits. No doubt about it. There may also be a particular focus in the school system towards wrote learning and a focus on math.
I'm prepared to entertain that race plays a part in types of intelligence, but not on one persons word. You'll have to provide deep and clear sourses my friend. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Coffeecup
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:20 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| What will have a clear effect of academic performance is the way a culture supports study and learning in general. Koreans have study discipline, and good study habits. |
To put it very simply and with no argumentation at all, basically what we have here is a website overwhelmingly powered by the "nurturists" in the "nature vs nurture" question. That's all. No insults to either party, just a clarification. It APPEARS that this website is powered by an idealism that a human can be created to be whatever he is wanted to be by those (and the society) that creates him; and moreover, a criminal commits his acts because society made him that way -- "not his fault". Again no insults.
| Quote: |
| I'm prepared to entertain that race plays a part in types of intelligence, but not on one persons word. You'll have to provide deep and clear sourses my friend. |
If I am the first and only person you've heard my comments made by then it appears you aren't getting a well rounded knowledge of real humanity, my neighbor. I challenge you to have the bravery to look it up though -- me, at 1500 won per hour in the PC bang my time is money, thank you very much  ....
| Quote: |
| sinse your claim is controvertial |
it's not a "claim" but official results. and it's only controversial to those who refuse to allow it. The won is ticking, gotta go. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
Well, I've got a lot of work to do on this one, sinse I think it only fair to take this seriously. But here's a little teaser. Oh, I think this is going to be a very interesting thread indeed.
| Quote: |
The co-mingling of science, politics, and Weltanschauung (ideological or religious world view) caused the darkest period for eugenics when Nazi Germans embarked on their "final solution" to the Jewish question, or the Holocaust. The Nazi racial hygiene program began with involuntary sterilizations and ended with genocide. Beginning with the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Congenitally Ill Progeny, 350,000 schizophrenics and mentally ill were involuntarily sterilized, and marriage or sexual contact between Jews and other Germans was banned. A few hundred black children and 30,000 German Gypsies were sterilized. By 1945, when the allies liberated those remaining in Nazi concentration camps, six million Jews, 750,000 Gypsies, and 70,000 German psychiatric patients had been killed by the Nazis (III, M�ller-Hill 1992, p. 47). After the German experience, eugenic thought was at its nadir, and to the present, the term "eugenics" invokes a sense of horror in some people.
|
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/scopenotes/sn28.htm#intro |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Josh_Nyc
Joined: 09 Jan 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:01 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Did I miss something? Looks like coffeecup's initial post was deleted. What was the gist of the message? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:04 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Even in its day, many people saw that eugenics was a dubious discipline, riddled with inconsistencies. But it was championed by a very prominent and respected biologist, Charles Davenport, and its conclusions told many people what they wanted to hear: that certain "racial stock" was superior to others in such traits as intelligence, hard work, cleanliness, and so on. In this view of human behavior, the work of Sigmund Freud was disregarded, while the ideas of behaviorism were just gaining ground. |
| Quote: |
| Not only did eugenicists promote better breeding, they wanted to prevent poor breeding or the risk of it. That meant keeping people with undesireable traits in their heritage (including alcoholism, pauperism, or epilepsy) separate from others or, where law allowed, preventing them from reproducing. |
| Quote: |
These vocal groups advocated laws to attain their aims, and in 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have "inferior" stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
|
| Quote: |
Behaviorism was introduced in 1913, and the genetic work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and others became known through the 'teens. After World War I, few scientists joined the ranks of the eugenicists. As the weight of the scientific community shifted toward behaviorism and true genetics, popular opinion followed. John Watson's articles about childrearing and self-improvement popularized behaviorism still further. The eugenics craze was already fading when the horrors of institutionalized eugenics revealed in Nazi Germany during World War II doused it entirely as a movement.
|
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh23eu.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
A strict Mendelian, Davenport believed so-called single-unit genes determined such traits as alcoholism and feeblemindedness. The way to eradicate such failings in the human stock, he argued, was to prevent their carriers from reproducing. He voiced the hope that "human matings could be placed upon the same high plane as that of horse breeding." He declared that prostitution was not caused by poverty but by an "innate eroticism." He advocated eugenic castrations.
|
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Eugenics-Cursed-Concentration-Camps.htm |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
This will be my last post tonight. I look forward eagerly to reading your reply tomorrow dear Coffeecup.
| Quote: |
| Nowhere, of course, were eugenic theories more enthusiastically codified into binding state doctrine than in Nazi Germany. In 1933 Adolf Hitler's government adopted the Eugenic Sterilization Law. Formulated by the Reich Ministry of the Interior, this edict ordered the compulsory sterilization of all German citizens--not simply those in custody or institutions--who displayed symptoms of a number of presumptively hereditary afflictions, including blindness, schizophrenia and offensive physical deformities. Government officials countered potential objections about the cruelty of this measure by asserting that personal sacrifices would serve the common weal. "We go beyond neighborly love," said one. "We extend it to future generations. Therein lies the high ethical value and justification of the law." As Kevles notes, the Nazis' draconian eugenics program did not originally encompass the anti-Semitism that later so rabidly characterized the Third Reich. But as Hitler and his regime turned ever more fiercely against the Jews, the sterilization of "undesirables" escalated into genocide, a horrifying realization of Francis Galton's vision of the world biologically cleansed according to one group's idea of human improvement. |
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Eugenics-Cursed-Concentration-Camps.htm |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Josh_Nyc
Joined: 09 Jan 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
kiwiboy, you cite some interesting sources, and for the most part they hold water. however, you cannot dismiss the notion that DNA/genetics does have influence on a set of traits common to a particular race/culture. if genetics applies to physical attributes such as the muscular build of some african tribes, the strong hearts of northern italians, the short stature of the pygmys... is it not possible for genetics to play a role in brain development/capacity and intelligence? afterall, the brain is protein encoded by the same strands of dna.
nature vs nurture. let's not forget that adaptation/evolution (darwinist theory) does play a role here. what is nurtured by environment over several generations makes its way into the genetic pool...hence becoming "nature".
and what do you all think about IQ? most of these tests are administered to children before they receive any advanced formal education. and IQ tests are tailored so that no advance study would be advantageous. how do you explain the higher IQ test scores for asians over any other race?
Last edited by Josh_Nyc on Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:43 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:48 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
is it not possible for genetics to play a role in brain development/capacity and intelligence? afterall, the brain is protein encoded by the same strands of dna.
|
This topic is very serious, too serious for amateur speculation. It will be all cut and paste for me, with links included, and I require the same of anyone that wants to be taken seriously.
But in short, from my very limited knowledge ( psych 101 ) intelligence has not been linked to heredity by any major studies in the last 30 years. Why is it different from other genetic characteristics? Because the intelligence is not a physical part of the brain. The brain is a grid of neural strings, connected by synapses. At birth they are empty. When an item of knowledge ( or any thought for that matter ) is input, the synapse fires ( chemically triggered ) and a neural pathway is created. This is proven because thoughts of a similar nature show up as neural activity along common neural pathways. In short, my understanding of intelligence is that it consists of the sum total comprehensible input. The more the input, the denser the neural pathway in that particular area. In simple terms, and this is a metaphor, the brain is a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it becomes.
Side note: This relates to teaching. It is far easier to for the brain to add an input item to an existing neural string, than to create a new one. That is why context is so important in teaching. Textbooks will tell you about "activating background knowledge" about a particular topic, the new items are attached to an existing neural pathway, rather than forcing the brain to start a seperate string.
| Quote: |
| The synapse is a specialized site of cell-to-cell contact, and is where information transfer between neurons takes place. The wiring patterns created by different types of neurons at specific synapses creates the functional logic that is the basis for information coding and processing in the brain |
http://www.brain.riken.go.jp/english/b_rear/b4_lob/b4_2.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Josh_Nyc
Joined: 09 Jan 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
actually, i started this thread. people, feel free to post your opinions regardless of sources or what not. this thread isn't meant to _prove_ anyone right or wrong, and i don't want this thread to end up to be a collection of boring scientific literature.
obviously there is no hard evidence that supports either case. i just want to hear your insight. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
