Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kenny Kimchee]

Oh, baby, I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair. I'll bet the farm that this guy has never seen the inside of a Japanese school. Comments to follow article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opinion/21mon4.html?incamp=article_popular

[dulouz]

[Ya-ta Boy]

There is no doubt American schools could do better. There is no doubt American education could learn a few things from educational systems in other countries. No doubt some teachers could do a whole lot better than they do now.

But the biggest single factor in how well a student performs in school is directly related to how much emphasis the parents put on education in the home. If Mom and Dad encourage little Johnny to spend his after school hours perfecting his jump shot, they have no right whining when Johnny doesn't have the grades to get into Harvard Medical School.

The authors of the article do have a point, though. Newbie teachers are expected to be prepared to teach effectively from Day 1. The premise is that they got their training in college and did an acceptable job in their student teaching experience. That's probably a faulty premise.

In my first years in the classroom I relied on the older teachers in the teachers lounge for advice on what to do with the problem students (which in my opinion is the major obstacle to learning in the classroom).

Mainstreaming every kid with every learning and behavioral disorder under the sun has a cost. Part of the price is the best students are getting less attention from the teacher.

I learned from the students what worked and what didn't work in my actual lessons. The article says the Japanese are writing scripts for each lesson. At least I think that is what it said. That could be effective up to a point. But I am not convinced it would be a good idea to base a school system on drones reading the scripts other people have prepared. Maybe its better in practice than it sounds.

[Demonicat]

Ya-ta boy: word.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I have something else to say about this.

I once had a chat with a dad in a bar. His question was why teachers didn't give more individual attention to students. Fair question.

My answer:

1. Our class is 55 minutes long.
2. Subtract 5 minutes for kids getting in their seats and quiet and me taking attendance. Ignore any time spent giving kids who were absent their make up assignments or kids coming in late from wherever.
3. In a perfect world, I now have 50 minutes left. That is 2 minutes per kid per period...and I haven't taught anything yet.
4. Let's say I give a 15 minute lesson and then a worksheet or group work or whatever...At that point, the dad said, "Hmm. I see where this is going. I hadn't really thought about the practical reality."

End of discussion.

An awful lot of the criticism comes from people who have never been in front of a class dealing with the practical realities of teaching. Or the problems they create with their criticisms.

I kind of lose my patience with them.

End of rant.

[mindmetoo]

What was weird was a few years ago the German school system was trying to figure out how to emulate the American school system.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Kenny Kimchee]

The thing that got my goat about this article was the glaring ommission (sp?) of the fact that probably close to half of Japanese students go to cram schools while virtually no US students do.

Critics of US education like to point out how the Asians are eating our lunch in the sciences, but it's an unfair comparison. It's like you've got a football game between Team A and Team B and Team A spanks Team B 42-7. Team B's supporters engage in hand wringing and say "We're playing the same game! Why did they beat us so badly? What are we doing wrong?" But suppose that A practices 50% more than B and spends their Friday and Saturday nights practicing while B is out getting high and chasing women. Would anyone be surprised that A won?

That's what's going on here; Japanese and Korean kids go to cram school (I can't speak for the rest of Asia, but I suspect it's the same) while American kids don't. The author of this op-ed fails to mention this critical fact. Either he knows this and deliberately omitted it (in which case he's withholding information and being deceitful in order to advance his agenda) or he doesn't know this (in which case he has no clue what he's talking about and is therefore not qualified to comment).

On December 8th, about ten educators from the States will be visiting my school here in Japan to observe our classes. I'm sure our teachers will have everything scripted to a T; they'll pull out all the stops and bust out their most learning-centered lessons (you know, the lessons that they only use for the demo classes - their normal lessons being the type that would put a speed freak to sleep) and will go through two or three dry runs with the class before they're observed. I wonder if the visitors will be able to see through the snow job - my money says they won't.

[Homer]

I think it is quite reasonable to think that school systems back home could learn a thing or two about schools in Japan or Korea. The opposite being just as reasonable (schools here taking a tip or two from our schools). It is both arrogant and closed-minded to reject an entire school system and to post our own as having nothing to learn from it.

As a former teacher back home (Canada) I can tell you there are a few things that our schools could pick up from Japanese and/or Korean schools. There are also a few things that our schools could teach schools here.

One cannot say that one system is just better than the other.

[AbbeFaria]

Despite the article's flaws, there can be no denying there are huge problems in the US education system. In my opinion, a lot of it stems from back in the 70's when hippies decided to focus more on the student's feelings instead of the results. Expecting certian standards has been slowly eroded over the last couple of decades. Don't tell Jimmy he's wrong, it may retard his self-esteem and hurt is personal growth. Instead, except less then perfect, just as long as he feels good about failing. The mind set of a lot of kids is to only work as hard as he/she has to. If you give them an easy out, they will take it.

No red ink because it's negative. No scores at sporting events so no one wins and, more importantly, no one loses. Things like this are killing the education system from within. PC has become the devil, folks.

My girlfriend back in the states is an english teacher at the highschool level. She grades paper after paper, a lot of them wrong to the point of deserving a failing grade. But does she fail them? Of course not. She allows them to do it over. And over and over and over, if necessary. She'll grade the same paper half a dozen times. She figures the student learns more that way. Instead of direct consequences for failure, they get an easy out. Why do it right the first time, when it doesn't really matter.

I'm a big fan of getting rid of summer vacation. Maybe a couple of weeks or something for vacations if they want it, but since the entire 2-3 months was originally designed so that Jack and Jill could be home for harvesting, it's kind of unnecessary. The US hasn't been a primarily agrarian society for around a hundred years. We could easily lose it.

[Homer]

[EFLtrainer]

I've said it before and will say it again: it's not the schools or the teachers, per se, it's the society around them. It's the parents who don't give a damn, the parents who care but don't hold their kids accountable, the culture that says a quick buck is the way to go, the tendency to blame rather than take responsibility, the huge disparities in funding because schools are funded state-by-state and, at least in California, by property taxes... ... and the relatively low pay for a LOT of work.