<p>Starcraft FTW!</p>
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<p>Well, they may be in the same “level”. But they have to deal with extremely difficult problems. You can see this by envisaging the hardest brain teaser you have done, multiply that difficulty by 2 or 3 and putting as the standard problem on a one of their calc exams.</p>
<p>2250 = average. The minjok school has the highest average SAT score in the world followed by Daewon with 2200something. The top students in both school would easily get 2400. </p>
<p>I am Korean too, but fortunately my parents immigrated to US to spare me from the rigor of Korean education. My dad was once nationally ranked 1 in mathematics during his high school years (in Korea) and did not want me and my brother to study like he did. Thank god for that. But that being said, they still have relatively high expectations of me and especially my younger brother.</p>
<p>Dispatche</p>
<p>"They all graduate polyglots; Korean, English, and two more. It makes me wish I had gone to a more competitive school. "</p>
<p>You don’t have to go to a competitive school to become a polyglot. In the school system in my country, Some schools make you start Spanish and English in elementary school or kindergarten. But we mainly start them in middle school. Then we take Latin,Greek and German in high school. Now some do not offer Latin and Greek anymore because the governement remove them from our national exam requirement. </p>
<p>I don’t think that any of the schools in my country are as drastic as the Korean one but must people get out of it with good linguistic skill.</p>
<p>I went to a top American private high school with a large percentage of Asian students, many from Korea. </p>
<p>I found that our own American education system is just as rooted in mindless memorization. The students (mostly Asian) who could regurgitate facts excelled - they were honored by the school, were admitted to top universities, and often provided heft financial incentives.</p>
<p>I intellectually tested into honors AP courses with such students, but soon found myself failing. One teacher told my Dad as I was forced to withdraw from the class, “I hate to see him go. He’s the only one in this class who can think for himself.”</p>
<p>I think our American education system is going to have to be revamped. One of the things (beside vast natural resources and space) that made America thrive was the culture of creativity. Even soldiers in World War II are widely considered successful because they could think for themselves in moments of crisis rather than wait for orders. Now, we seem to feed right into our weakness - mindless conformity - rather than foster our creativity. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I finally moved beyond the mindless regurgitation into philosophical discourse in which I discovered, for the first time, that I’m not stupid. It was the educational system that simply did not know how to harness my particular type of intelligence.</p>
<p>This is exactly why my parents moved from India…</p>
<p>hi jack, long time no see</p>
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<p>Please don’t be petty - if you’ve learned something, you will do well in terms of grades and tests. Likewise, there is definitely high correlation between learning and test grades. That is what I meant.</p>
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<p>I fully stand by my original statement: Learning and memorization can’t be separated.</p>
<p>Let’s leave common connotations out of this. It doesn’t matter that the word memorization IMPLIES that it’s the antithesis of true learning.</p>
<p>How do you “learn”, form understandings of key concepts, if you haven’t memorized the prerequisites? There’s a reason why kids use drills to “ingrain” the multiplication tables into their heads. Likewise, how are you to “learn”, apply these ideas to new situations, unless you’ve memorized the key concepts that you’ve just understood? I have great epiphanies of brilliance, where I feel like I truly comprehend a difficult concept after hours of digestion, but what good is it if I forget it within the next day? Only through memorization can I say that I have learned it, because only through memorization can I apply it to new situations.</p>
<p>Oh, and I believe all memorization is rote, so don’t bother arguing semantics there.</p>
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<p>Eh what does it matter? Even the fact that you can recall an equation’s essence via its English name means that there was some memorization involved, and not just some natural process of “getting it”.</p>
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<p>I admit I changed my stance a little as I thought it through. Both systems promote memorization, but the Korean one not as much because it requires a deeper understanding (probably?)</p>
<p>ee33ee, I stand by my original point that memorization does not describe the proper though process to excel in the American system.</p>
<p>Take physics, for instance. While others were struggling with memorizing the list of formulae on the reference table, the part of the class, including myself, that hadn’t missed the boat on thinking was able to excel without ingraining the variables and their various combinations into their heads by repetition. When faced with a question about the potential energy stored in a spring, most would try to recall that “pee ee equals kay ecks squared.” We would instead reason that, intuitively, the force on a spring varies directly with displacement, and that therefore stored energy must vary with the square by some constant of proportionality. </p>
<p>Do you see the difference in the way these two types understood the concept at hand?</p>
<p>No I don’t.</p>
<p>All I see is that you chose the smarter path by memorizing the concepts behind the equations as well as the equations themselves.</p>
<p>Did the other group of students learn the material? No. Did they use memorization? Yes.</p>
<p>Did you learn the material? Yes. Did you use memorization? Yes.</p>
<p>Why? Because you performed “more” or “better” memorization.</p>
<p>And this is all so silly. Do you really think the Koreans sit at home for 12 hours a day memorizing PE = kx^2 without learning the concepts?</p>
<p>EDIT: The point is you didn’t fully understand the concepts until you ingrained it into your mind through memorization. Then you did some practice problems to sort the kinks out. Again, repetition and memorization. This is what the Koreans do, except at a more comprehensive level. But when they do it, it’s given the evil rote memorization connotation.</p>
<p>I agree with ee33ee, those kids actually learn the concepts via memorization if they have to. It is impossible to do math/science (the field Koreans excel at) without actually understanding the concepts.</p>
<p>No, I don’t. However, I do feel that after that much time, no concept can evade being reduced to rote.</p>
<p>I seriously don’t think this is healthy both physically and mentally. </p>
<p>On another note, why can’t i go to a school like that ?!?!</p>
<p>It’s all rote unless you’re so super cool that you can present the information once and have it stick. Then the repetition number would be one, and it would arguably not be rote.</p>
<p>Rote is good. Everyone needs rote.</p>
<p>But are they overdoing it with the “roteness”? Now THAT’s debateable.</p>
<p>Schools like this both impress and frighten me at the same time. The intense studying and atmosphere seem kind of unhealthy to me. What did everyone else think of the part of the article where it mentioned that some students stayed up until after 2AM to study by LANTERN LIGHT? If I was a teacher I’d be super worried about my students lack of sleep.</p>
<p>But still! Near perfect SATs and self studying nine APs in a language that’s not your native tongue! Is that really the product of rote memorization?</p>
<p>ee33ee, I guess we are on the same page. We merely diverge on how much repetition exactly qualifies as “rote.” This mini-debate is going nowhere, so I’d say we should agree to disagree.</p>
<p>I stand by my opinion that the system in Korea is more rote than that in the US. I never claimed that nothing is rote in our system; the Korean system simply allots more time than ours does to extending comprehension to ingrained facts.</p>
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<p>More like eidetic memory.</p>
<p>South Korean’s dream school is Seoul National University, SNU. Japanese is Tokyo University (Dodai), Akamon, literally means Red Gate, the school you (as a high school student) can not get into without bleeding.</p>
<p>Typical Far East Asians (of course including the great China) have enormous intellectual pride themselves somehow and American Ivy league is, at best, yet a close alternative choice even in this coming international open society.</p>
<p>Tokyo is said to proud their PhD degree’s more valuable than any others. Really? This part of Asians, maybe the whole world, at the same time have great respect toward American prestige research Universities like UChicago and Harvard where new ideas are formed and tested. SNU with the best kids out of 50 million no Nobel laureate, Dodai with more than 100 million 5 Nobel prize winners, a great accomplishment!. University of Chicago 80 plus. Great America!. Why? A shame what’s wrong Asian high education system? Market is truly not failing in American University system.</p>
<p>The results speak for themselves. Korea has pulled itself out of poverty and is virtually a 1st world country. They were poorer than Mexico 50 years. Maybe if other countries around the world had this level of study habits and respect for learning they’d be able to compete.</p>
<p>At what cost?</p>
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<p>It takes a very talented individual to pull all that off, regardless of how much he/she depends on rote memorization.</p>