<p>The WSJ published an interesting profile of a "rock-star teacher" in South Korea who runs a private tutoring business that uses video lectures to supplement classroom learning. It's an interesting insight into their education system. A few quotes:
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Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S...</p>
<p>But nowhere have [tutoring services] achieved the market penetration and sophistication of hagwons in South Korea, where private tutors now outnumber schoolteachers...
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<p>In the US, teacher unions tend to create a uniform system of teacher compensation based on seniority, degrees, etc. In contrast, the South Korean tutoring system relentlessly focuses on recruiting high-performing talent:
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To find rock-star teachers like Mr. Kim, hagwon directors scour the Internet, reading parents' reviews and watching teachers' lectures. Competing hagwons routinely try to poach one another's celebrity tutors.
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<p>There are clearly some downsides to the South Korean approach, with the biggest being that it favors families with more financial resources who can engage the best tutors. On the other hand, it seems that the system has worked to produce strong results through the entire population. More: Should</a> the U.S. Follow South Korea's Education System? - WSJ.com</p>
<p>My $0.02:
This system does something that our system doesn’t do effectively, it creates competition between individual teachers to outperform. In the status qou teacher’s are compared on test scores but not much else is used as a basis of comparison. This is inherently flawed for many reasons, many of which people have read already. In SK’s system the emphasis is placed on a myriad of factors such as parent reviews and the quality of teaching. This is similar to how one buys the best laptop, the best landscaping service, and pretty much everything else in our free-market economy. Clearly this system has the potential to motivate many teachers to rise to the top, and creates a higher demand and more recognition for skilled teachers.
Conversely, there is the issue of viability. For this system to work you need a population of highly motivated students, as well as parents. In our society where many students don’t care about school, where many parents ignore their children’s academic success or failure, it would be difficult to implement a system of online teaching that would work suitably. While the members of CC are clearly active and engaged, most students are not, and this would not change that underlying problem with our system.</p>
<p>Many is still a vast minority. As a parent, I am around other parents and they care greatly about their child’s success. The ones who don’t care are few and far between.</p>
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<p>Is it they don’t care or is it the delivery system. The Korea model might be the thing to make them care more.</p>
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<p>You do realize that CC is such a minute portion of the population. Most kids who come here are looking for an answer and once they get it, they are gone. As for not changing the underlying problem, you have presented no real evidence to back that up.</p>
<p>Let’s not be so quick to make blanket statements about the U.S. and South Korea…</p>
<p>While SK is graduating more competent students, said students are studying 20 hours a day to pass the CSAT and get into a good college. Prestige is everything; sleeping in class is acceptable if the coursework isn’t relevant to the test, and if you don’t get into a top school you’re usually treated as a second-class citizen. The vast majority of work and learning is done at hagwon, not in class. Even though the government has tried to crack down on hagwons being open past the nightly curfew, hundreds of them still operate until 2 or 3 in the morning. </p>
<p>More students commit suicide and crack under the intense pressure that makes CC look like a fairytale playground. There’s a reason why middle school entrance exams have been abolished and Saturday classes have been cut back - the government is realizing that kids are miserable, yet driven by success that has lifted South Korea up from total poverty in less than 50 years. There isn’t anything wrong with success, of course, but in SK it’s taken to the extreme.</p>
<p>You can argue that the vast majority of students in American schools fall into the other extreme - lazy, unmotivated, difficult, challenging (like the kid who told his teacher off for “packet teaching”) - but neither extreme is or should be the dominant attitude in schools.</p>
<p>Clearly, the system is one that is spinning out of control. This said, there is one parallel: a general system of education that leaves plenty of holes. The biggest difference is that families in South Korea have realized this, and that in the US, we let our immense self-esteen come in the way and refuse to acknowledge how abysmal our public system of education truly is. And especially after factoring what we spend per pupil.</p>
<p>It should also help people understand why the “local” brands of special tutoring and hagwons in the United States are paying dividends for the many students who have decided --or better said, have been forced-- to attend such factories for the obvious purpose a gaming a system of admission that has been particularly prone to be … gamed. There is a reason why one can find plenty of SAT centers nestled between donut shops and dry cleaners! Sweatshops just take a different format. </p>
<p>Fwiw, beyond the lack of morality of many of the hagwon operations, there are have been plenty of question about the legality of their tactics used to help the students access “unreleased” academic material. The rampant cheating abroad can easily be traced to both the presence of the cheating outfits AND the open acceptance by parents to win at all costs, especially when the results are used overseas as it is with the SAT.</p>
<p>Or, is the the population that created the system (driven population demanding tutors for their kids to give them the best edge)? One could argue that the USA’s high performing prep schools are a more humane (kid friendly) version.</p>
<p>The problem with SK is that they are pushing average kids to be good by making them study until 2am. What you really want is to find the great kids, and let them develop in a more kid friendly way. Let the average kid find something else more suitable. That’s not to say that a highly driven kid shouldn’t be allowed to push themself - to each his own.</p>
<p>@geo113 I guess we have had very different experiences, at my highschool, and middle school there was a small portion, (20-25%) that tried to do well. The majority of the students were very unmotivated. I would tutor kids after school in math and english, and 1 out of 20 would try, the rest resented being there, and were more focused on socializing.</p>
<p>In regards to parents, I should rephrase that a little, I’m not saying they didn’t care, they just didn’t care enough to take any sort of active role in their children’s education. Out of those who didn’t care/try most had parents who didn’t pay any attention to their grades. The more affluent school that I am zoned for has a similar problem, more students are uninterested in learning, and just aren’t motivated. To them school is a chore, something they have to go to. This lack of motivation IS a problem.</p>
<p>“You do realize that CC is such a minute portion of the population. Most kids who come here are looking for an answer and once they get it, they are gone.”
That is why I started my statement with ‘while’, it is an indication of something that is an exception or out of the norm. Also my evidence that an online based system would not work is purely a logos based statement. (I began the entire post with ‘My $0.02:’ an indication of an opinion-centric post rather than one based upon facts)
My reasoning explained:
In SK the highly motivated students work extremely hard, with parents who push them extremely hard to do well. The online systems cater to all levels of students and provide varying levels of education based on payment.
In the U.S as I’ve outlined above, students are generally less motivated, less eager to learn, and the culture is not nearly as much of a meritocracy. Parents are generally less demanding, with only a few ‘tiger moms’.
Adapting the SK system to the U.S would inevitably fail because only a small segment of the population would truly be engaged in such a system. In order for such a system to work a larger percentage of the population would need to be actively seeking the services so that teachers would be given a large amount of feedback. Online teaching has begun to take a role in the U.S but mainly at the collegiate level, where students are generally more motivated. (MOST of us go to college to do better and learn, not to party which is an indication of motivation)</p>
<p>Furthermore in response to the idea that online services would make students care more, what evidence is there? In fact online services such as GrowingStars have been around for years, but they haven’t caused any large changes in the American system.</p>
<p>I guess that depends on what “more suitable” is. I don’t think we can afford to have high dropout rates or to graduate kids from HS with limited literacy and math skills. The types of jobs that would enabled these students to earn a middle-class living (e.g., high paying manufacturing jobs) simply aren’t available any more. Today, that “manufacturing” job is likely to involve programming, math, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, you need basic math, reading, and computer skills. But, in my area, companies are looking for machinists and welders. Doesn’t need a kid suffer for 4 years through college. A year or two in a tech college with a much less demanding course load. A lot of machinists and welders are making more money than college grads.</p>
<p>I do think that CC parents and kids are the minority in terms of time invested and interest in education. Perhaps this is a function of demographic and disposable time.</p>
<p>My son was fortunate enough to have been taught by our version of a rock star teacher at the small rural school he attended. The school went charter so Mr. Rock Star left for another building in the district.</p>
<p>The difference for him was startling. The majority of parents don’t care. The majority of kids don’t care. At first he thought it was a weird bubble year. But the same occurred the following year and the year after. About 25% at most were involved and or concerned about their 6th grade child’s progress. He’d call 3, 4 or 5 times before he could convince a parent to come in for a conference. </p>
<p>This is a small town school in an community where many must commute 25 miles to find work. About 35% go on to college from high school. Many of those are attending community college. </p>
<p>Outside of the high earning bubbles of the our country, this is a story I hear over and over.</p>
<p>Why would we want to emmulate a country’s school system that its own citizens are trying to escape from. My kids’ int’l school was full of SKorean kids.</p>
<p>The demographics of international schools change between primary school & secondary school. The primary schools are full of kids w parents on foreign posting, who generally send kids back to complete secondary school in the home country. The secondary schools, OTOH, are full of SKoreans who send their kids out of the home country to escape secondary school & the hagwan culture in SKorea.</p>
<p>While kids of other nationalities were overseas because they were accompanying their parents on a foreign work assignment, the SKorean kids were there for the explicit purpose of NOT attending school in their home country. </p>
<p>Nearly all SKorean kids had father living/working in SKorea, while mother accompanied child in foreign country to attend secondary school. Quite a financial burden… Just goes to show how badly families want to opt out of the SKorean school culture.</p>
<p>The stellar achievements of SKorean students should be viewed in light of the near zero population diversity there, and the relatively uniform quality of education (national education). Their approach is not much different from what we had to go thru to pass the dreaded national entrance exam in my birth country of Elbonia (one of those small expansion countries in Europe). We did have our local hagwons, lots of them, with their own photocopied textbooks, endless tests, lectures, etc, all aiming to pass the test. There were different price points for our hagwons, too, with expensive air conditioned ones and 5-10 kids per class to near public school sized 30 kids per class.</p>
<p>Like SKorea, we had nationalized education and nearly zero diversity. In the US, we have neither. Seeing the opportunities, skills, and critical thinking that my daughters developed in our local (US) school system (ranked in the top 500 schools in the country) has all but convinced me that the SKorean or Elbonian system would not work here, and vice versa.</p>
<p>I only read a part of OP’s post and one answer. Growing up in South Korea (I’m an immigrant), I can tell you one sure thing: South Koreans also use “uniform system of teacher compensation based on seniority, degrees, etc.” You shouldn’t be confused Hagwon teachers with school teachers. Private or public, school teachers get paid by their seniority + degrees/certificates just like in the United States.</p>
<p>Many South Koreans have agreed that their educational system failed for last ten years. Every new government promised that they are gonna change the “failed” educational system, but none has been successful. One thing you should notice is, that “Rock-star teacher” is a hagwon teacher, not a school teacher. Hagwon is Korean for a cram school, and school teachers in Korea have been ignored for so many years now, since students focus on cram school classes and take a nap in the actual school classes. And as Turbo93 already pointed out, it’s all about competitions and passing tests, instead of a real intellectual inquiry. It is alarming that us Americans are taking old South Korean educational system so seriously, while South Koreans almost uniformly believe that their system failed. As a result of the failed system (and not being able to change it for more than a decade), it is very usual for South Korean students to go to school at 7 a.m. and leave school at 9p.m. and go to a cram school until 12 a.m… Seniors usually go to cram schools until 2 or 3 a.m… </p>
<p>Well, obviously, since I’m an immigrant, I experienced both education, and American educational system obviously has a serious problem as well. And I think those problems two countries are at the two extremes: South Korean education is way too uniformized and competitive; American education is way too laid back and have no standard system to minimize the gaps between schools. Copying S.Korean education certainly is not an answer. Rather, we need to learn while a little bit of competition is good, competition-centered education will create more of problem. We should create unique system based on our racial, ethnical, geographical diversity that S.Korea does not have…</p>