The following is a link to a very interesting BBC video that came out around April 2010 that showcases the day in the life of a Korean school boy. The video does a very accurate job of describing the school system and values that I work with.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8605789.stm
Have you seen the Korean movie "Poetry"? It's brilliant and not to be missed.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading your blog of your trip. Also enjoyed being with your folks last week when we were in DC for our retirement seminar (from the Foreign Service).
Love,
Jan
As an educator, I watched the BBC report with interest. I came across this mentality while serving as a college counselor to several Korean students and their families at Colegio Maya in Guatemala City. They wanted their children ONLY to attend Ivy League schools and anything less was considered failure. I had a lot of work to do to convince them otherwise. One family was 'shamed' because their son got into Georgia Tech, which is a highly respected college, and not into MIT. The family needed a lot of counseling and I had to also convince the student that he should be proud that h got into a highly selective school in the field he had chosen. It's an uphill fight and a cultural divide that is difficult to bridge. I was happy to see that there are some enlightened Korean families who appreciate that rote learning is not necessarily the best form of learning and are choosing to leave their educational system in search of someplace more creative. I do admire the discipline of their system, however. Students have goals from a very early age---at the expense of what we would consider a healthy childhood.
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