Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Treefarmer]

Korean kids go to school for longer hours, go in on saturday etc and yet most of the 10 yr olds i teach can't even find places like Australia, England or India on a map, don't seem to know the diference between continents and countries, and think London and Roma are countries?

I'm not flaming Korea it's a serious question, I knew all that stuff when I was 6, and it doesn't take that long to learn it

do they not teach any geography at all in public schools?

[butlerian]

[mexican-american-in-korea]

It's because Korea is the center of the universe (to Koreans) and why should they know anything about world geography. Seriously though I presented a map to some high school students and asked them where Korea was (one of them pointed to Africa), then I asked where the USA was and they pointed to Australia. I was seriously disappointed and perplexed. I had similar incidents with some middle school students.

Maybe it's because on Korean maps, Korea really is in the center of the map and anything otherwise confuses them.

But I also try to teach them some geography, too.

[Axl Rose]

How come posters make threads called "how come?", "huh?", "why?", "can you help me?" and "YAY! GO ME!"???

It's incredibly annoying, since all of the above thread titles could be about banking, TEFL certs, Middle schools, the lunar landings - we've no idea. So when someone does a search on banking, TEFL certs, Middle schools, the lunar landings, these threads won't appear in the search results.

How come threads called "how come?", "yay! Go me!" always disappear down the page and never achieve more than 1 or 2 pages? Because people haven't the patience to click on something that could be about either banking, TEFL certs, Middle schools, the lunar landings or some other topic they may or may not be interested in. That's how come.

Can people PLEASE give some indication as to their threads' contents in the title?? Thanks.

Anyway, this thread is about geography in Korea, so let's answer: my experience is that K-kids know where the famous things are - America, Canada, Australia, Europe, "England" (they think England is an island of course, but then so do many) but ask them to find something more tricky and they're clueless. It's of a similar standard to the West IMO. K-kids will struggle with Portugal, Finland, Peru, South Africa, but so will Western kids struggle to find Cambodia, Thailand and - yes - Korea. Koreans all know the basics, I find, which cannot be taken for granted in Western graduates, let alone kids - especially women. Women are to geography what Al Quada are to Zionism.

[dogshed]

[mj roach]

how come...?

someone would post that they had 'never molested a child before korea'

and then presume to ask inane questions about kids and geography??

[Axl Rose]

[kalkamagi]

OP, not to criticize, but when you were 10, could you find south korea on a map? or even know the difference between north and south korea?

you'd be surprised how many people/students just forget/don't bother learning. (i watched a few minutes of "are you smarter than a 5th grader" last night, and seriously, this woman throught there were 3 degrees in a triangle.)

again, no disrespect, but your question reminded me of this tour guide at the University of Sydney. he kept on asking us (all korean & hong kong students) if we could remember all of the kings and queens of england, what were henry the xiii's wives' names were, etc. "c'mon, don't be shy! don't you remember?". i'm american, and i didn't know what the 'ell he was talking about, let alone any of the others. i mean, why would we study that and why would he assume that asians have a viable interest in remembering that?

or perhaps it's just those particular kids at your school. maybe they feel embarassed to answer the question?

anyway, i know how frustrating it can be sometimes.

[Treefarmer]

sorry about the title, i won't do it again, i'll edit the OP as well

when I was 10 I couldn't find Korea on the map, I didn't even know anything about it when I was 25 and first came here, that's totally different tho, Korea isn't that important a country to the west (or debatably even to Japan)it's like that most westeners aren't exactly sure where any of the countries in America except Brazil and Argentina go. Most people (adults) who Itold about it when I was back home last year thought it was some sort of charity gig in south asia...

but I could find the big countries like America, Australia, Japan, Russia, Brazil etc when I was 6 and I definetely knew that Rome and Asia weren't countries when I was 10

Maybe some people don't know this stuff back home, but everyone at school did. I'm not expecting that they know where Luxembourg or Peru is, but I think it's pretty dense that they think that England is in Africa, or don't know that the massive island at the bottom of the map is Australia

[Treefarmer]

re: kalkamagi I'm English and I'm pretty clueless about our Kings and Queens, I found it incredibly boring and pointless at school and still do except the odd conspiracy etc

[doggyji]

[RACETRAITOR]

I think it's a lot easier for us to learn geography. Canada and the US are big countries and easy to find on a map. Korea is proportionally much smaller, so there's a lot more territory outside their own country to learn.

[Alyallen]

[passport220]

[silvertoes]