Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hockeyguy109]

I must admit that I have complained about the Korean educational system throughout my time working here. There's a lot of things that just seem wrong with it - but tonight I watched this film called "The War on Kids". It's about the major problems with the American school system. After seeing it, I feel that teaching in Korea might be a lot more effective than teaching in America...even if we are just "edutainers".

I have no experience teaching in America though. Does anyone who has taught in the American and Korean public school systems care to comment on this?

Anyways, I highly recommend this documentary. If nothing else, it should make you feel better about your current job.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1505145/

Torrent: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4999459

[seonsengnimble]

I just watched this and thought it was pretty good. I agree with about 60% of it.

The first part was pretty disturbing and dealt with the criminalization of students and the no tolerance policy. This is pretty ridiculous. Expelling kindergartners for playing cops and robbers, having drug busts where swat teams come in and force students to the ground at gunpoint is horrible. I disagree, however with removing metal detectors and security officers. While, I don't believe that things like school fights and various normal things that kids do should be prosecuted criminally, there should be some effort to inhibit kids from bringing guns to school, and there should be someone there who can intercede when people's lives are at stake. Most schools don't need these measures, but there are areas where schools are in fact dangerous places which do need some amount of security.

The second part deals with medicating kids and is also pretty depressing. While there are probably a small amount of kids who could benefit from medication, the amount of kids who are diagnosed and prescribed is pretty ridiculous. I've had plenty of kids who would be diagnosed as add/adhd, and they simply required a little more attention and different teaching approaches.

The third part is where I disagree with the documentary. Mandatory schooling does serve a benefit. Originally, it was so that more kids would go to school instead of staying home to work on the farm. Now it's just so more kids will go to school. While things like truancy officers are pretty stupid, requiring that kids go to school helps bridge the divide between kids who have parental involvement and kids who don't.

The idea that learning each subject for 50 minutes and then changing is insane, also doesn't make too much sense to me for a couple of reasons. Yes, you can't go as deeply into each subject in 50 minutes as you could for six hours. However, if I'm interested in history and English, but not math and science, I'd rather have a couple of hours of interesting subjects and a couple of hours of subjects I don't find interesting than six hours of a subject I don't find interesting. They bring up the idea that teachers will be halfway through a lesson when the bell rings, and then the students have to switch gears. That seems more like poor lesson planning.

I also disagree with the idea of homework being ineffective. While the use of homework could use some tweaking, overall I find it to be a good idea. There are two main kinds of homework. There's the kind that has students practicing what they learned that day at home, and there's individual projects. The first kind, while tedious does help to solidify what's been learned. My main reason for believing this is what I've seen as a teacher here in Korea. The students who do their homework remember more the next day. If I have a student who usually does his or her homework, and one day they don't do it, most of the time, his or her performance in class is worse on the day he or she hasn't done his or her homework. Granted, there are other factors that contribute to this, but the simple idea that more exposure to the subject increases the understanding.

The other kind of homework also has many benefits. First of all, it helps students explore areas that interest them. If a student wants to learn about ancient Egypt, then the kid has an opportunity to spend time learning about a subject that really interests him.(Sorry ladies, I'm tired of typing or her, so I will exclude feminine pronouns from here on out.) This also helps students learn how to take learning into their own hands.

They also mention in regards to homework that a kid is owned by a school during most of his waking hours. I personally didn't find that to be the case when I was a student. I'd go to school. School would finish at about 3. I'd go out and play until dinner. I'd spend about an hour on homework after dinner. Then the rest of the evening, I'd either read or watch tv. I didn't go home from school, crack open the books and then collapse.

The one area I would like to see change in regards to homework, however, is in the inflexibility of grades. If a student already knows the material, doesn't do the homework and gets 100% on all of the tests and quizzes, there is no reason to give the student a C or a D when they have absolutely no need to do the homework.

[UrbanStyle]

public school is about institutionalizing the kids to be subservient to the state.

We are trained to be prisoners, that's why for every little thing they need to call the authorities.

They don't want smart independent thinkers, they want workers bees who will jump in line and bow down to authority.

[some waygug-in]