Education News

1) All the major papers are covering events at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute for Sciece and Technology), where four college students have committed suicide since the beginning of the year.  This seems extraordinary, but according to the DongA's take on the tragedy:

... a combined 16 students have committed suicide, with four taking their lives in 2003 and this year each. Given the student body of 10,000, this translates into 1.4 to 1.5 suicides per 10,000 students per year.
This figure is no different from the national average suicide rate for undergraduate and graduate students. Of 2.1 million undergraduate and graduate students nationwide, 230 to 340 kill themselves every year.

Still, the recent flurry of deaths have prompted concern.  Some critics place the blame on president Suh Nam-pyo, a former MIT prof. who took over the reins in 2006.  The Korea Herald chronicles:

Suh revised the tenure system which used to guarantee the faculty members’ right to stay permanently at the school. He then ordered all lectures at the school to be delivered in English.

In 2007, Suh adopted a unique tuition system, which is believed to have driven many students to the verge of breakdown.
The state-funded elite school, which was established in 1971 to nurture talented scientists and engineers, had not originally received any tuition from students.
However, under the new tuition system, students are required to pay different levels of fees up to 6 million won ($5,538) a year when their grade point averages are less than 3.0 out of 4.3.
Of the total 7,805 students enrolled last year, 1,600 students, or 12.9 percent, paid an average of 2.45 million won. And the figure has been on the rise recently, with 4.9 percent in 2008 and 8 percent in 2009.

 According to reports, this problem did not affect the students who died, but Suh is nonetheless walking back the policy.  It seems to me a pretty poor policy to begin with, adding huge pressures to students, espcially from poorer families; it was also an effective design to empower unethical professors to bestow grades in return for, ah, favors.

2) Speaking of bestowing grades, a JoongAng Daily article titled 'Teachers are under fire for revising report cards' reports on homeroom teachers at 23 high schools in Seoul for revising previous teachers' comments on report cards without permission, to enhance sthe students' chances for admission to colleges. 

According to the office, the teachers revised the cards because so many parents and students pressured them to do so, saying any negative comments would hinder the students from gaining admission.
“It is true that teachers feel burdened when parents and students beg them to change the comments on the cards,” a teacher in Seoul said. “If we don’t do it, they would blame us, saying we are leading students to fail to enter university.” [...]
Among the revised comments on the cards, 41 percent of them were about career counseling for students, and 32 percent were about reading habits of students. The rest of them were about student club activities or volunteering.
Teachers who committed the unauthorized revisions of report cards will be given warnings or reprimands.

3) Finally this week, both the Times and the Herald cover a report from Korea Educational Development Institute stating the number of high school students choosing to study a second foreign language (after English) fell sharply last year, after authorities decided it was no longer necessary:

The number of second foreign language classes at high schools nationwide also fell 11.2 percent to 18,554, the data found.
The dive in popularity for a second foreign language has come after the government adjusted high school curricula in 2009 to put more emphasis on the study of English, Korean language and math. Learning a second foreign language was compulsory until 2009.
By language, the number of students who chose German as a second foreign language marked the steepest 26.9 percent fall from 29,881 to 21,841, according to the data.
Students of Spanish also fell 25.4 percent, followed by French (18.6 percent), Japanese (17.5 percent), Chinese (13.3 percent) and Russian (5.6 percent), they said.

Korean Teenager News

Instead of my usual "Education News Roundup" I'm going to focus on two stories from the paps reporting on survey results comparing Korean teenagers' attitudes to those of other nations'. Both surveys came out of the National Youth Policy Institute, but were carried by Korea Times and Korea Herald, respectively.

1) Korean teens less happy than Chinese, Japanese

71.2 percent of surveyed young Koreans said they are happy, lower than the 92.3 percent of Chinese contentment and 75.5 percent of Japanese gladness.
The survey was conducted on 2,268 Korean middle and high school students, 1,167 Chinese and 1,144 Japanese students last October and November.
Of the Korean students who answered "yes" to the question, 20.8 percent said they were very happy, far lower than the ratio of Chinese students' 60.2 percent and still less than that of the 27.6 percent in Japan.

Korean teens also showed the least contentment with their free time, 67.5% being satisfied, presumably with amount and type of leisure time, compared to 78 percent of Chinese and 74.7 percent of Japanese respondents. While it is easy to blame this on lengthy and intensive study time, as the researcher does, it is worth remembering that Japanese students run a similar prep gauntlet.

Check out this BBC report on South Korean education.

Koreans, at 48%, were sandwiched between Chinese (83.7%) and Japanese (23.9%) when asked if they will do anything for their country if it is in danger. Of course, the males will do their mandatory military service, so perhaps they feel it satisfies the requirement.

2) S. Korean teens' social skills among worst in world: report
No surprise there.

Each nation was assessed in the three areas of relationship promotion, social cooperation and conflict management through surveys of students' participation in local and school communities, their perceptions of community and foreigners, as well as democratic solutions to conflicts, the report said.
South Korean teens scored the lowest among the 36 nations with scores of zero in the two areas -- relationship promotion and social cooperation -- that valued highly voluntary participation in local and school communities.

Koreans scored well in the third component, Conflict Resolution, because of their ability to list off possible methods for democratic resolutions--not because of any demonstrated ability to resolve conflicts democratically. The article continues:

Teenagers in Thailand had the best social skills with 0.69 points, while Indonesia (0.64), Ireland (0.60), Guatemala (0.59), Britain (0.53) and Chile (0.52) followed closely behind.
"Social interaction skills are linked to the ability to live harmoniously with culturally or socioeconomically different counterparts, so they are very important to teenagers who are the leading players in a globalized and multicultural age," the report [from NYPI] said.
"(We must) pay attention to the fact that Korean children scored well only in areas with a strong emphasis on written assessments and performed very poorly in areas related to internal and external activities. There is a need for measures to change the policy on developing knowledge toward nurturing independence," it added.

Tell Me Something Good

Wow! One month of the new school year has already flown by! It's hard to believe.

In the Big Scary World(TM), lots of crazy stuff has been going on, from the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami to democracy movements in several Middle East countries, from an unparalleled attack on collective bargaining rights in Minnesota to Charlie Sheen's meltdown all across our TV screens (not mine, though, since it's hardly been on all month).

But I'm not here to gab and whine about all that guff, I want to talk about rose-colored glasses, seeing the world through. That's the gist of the 11th grade lesson plan this week, titled "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life" in which Monty Python's Life of Brian plays a key role.

Class begins with an image of a half-filled glass of wine and the question, "Is the glass half-empty or half-full?" Opinion is split on the matter, allowing me to introduce that meme as a "litmus test" of optimism vs. pessimism.

Oh, and a poem by Oscar Wilde:

Between the optimist and the pessimist,
the difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut;
the pessimist the hole!

Etc. After a slew of optimistic quotes, cartoons and images, students have to write sanguinary, optimistic statements about some very dreary, downbeat topics, like global warming, poverty, taxes, sweatshops and 수능 suneung (college entrance testing). They choose two from the list of eight, and I randomly select numerous students to tell us "something good!"

After two years of trying to figure the best way to "get" participation in this kind of public sharing, I have more or less given up. I never felt it was fair to always "pick on" the best students, and I feel it's mostly counterproductive to embarrass the non-speakers. Even meandering among the rows of tables and clapping a hand on someone's shoulder didn't sit right.

But I've hit on a solution that works for me, and seems also to please the students, who like its verifiable randomness. I have an English coffee mug containing little plastic balls, and on each ball, I've written a number from 1 to 41, encompassing the last two digits of their student ID numbers. I pull a ball from the mug and it's kind of like bingo--except in reverse. You know.

Now, it's not like I lucked into some little plastic balls with numbers on them--though I looked and looked. What I found, in the office supplies section, was map pins with reasonably large heads on them, in a mix of colors. I borrowed some wire snips and a pair of pliers, cut off the metal pin part, and went at it with a Sharpie. Voila!

Oh, and you can tell it's an "English" coffee mug because it's decorated with little images of Beefeaters and red phone booths and London Bridge and the Millennium Eye. 3000 W at E-Mart.

Do 10 or 12 numbers in rapid succession every class, and before long you'll hear from everybody. Another option is to have them read sequentially, but don't start with student #1--pick a ball from the mug and go up from there for a while.

I started dl'ing and supering target language text on top of my videos some time ago, and "Bright Side of Life" was among the earliest. I recently created a new YouTube account where I will be uploading just these classroom videoshttp://www.youtube.com/user/SeoulTeacha. Of about 100 videos that I use or have used, 30 or so have been subbed. It will take a while.



After watching the video, we use a handout I modified from EFL Classroom 2.0, one of the best resources on the net--I think the "Complain" box goes first, that's about the only change I made. In the last 12-15 minutes of class, students use the handout to generate conversation. Yes, it's artificial; yes, it's kind of silly; but it's also kind of fun!

Challenge your students to think how to respond when their friend/partner says "Nobody loves me!" or "The president is so stupid!" I have listened in on some quite inventive reasons for optimism. Generating off-the-cuff English is hard, so give praise, but don't let them slip into Korean or stop trying.

Whether you think you can or you can't--you're right.
- Henry Ford, US industrialist

Education News Roundup

1) Covered by both the Times and Herald, the Korean education community reacts to the latest attempt to clarify and define strategies to replace corporal punishment of students from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The boards of four education offices, Seoul, Gyeonggi, Gangwon and North Jeolla, have decided to reject the ministry's new policy, claiming the disciplinary measures "inflict physical pain on students and may violate their rights."

What are these draconian measures? Lists the Herald: "proposed alternatives include push-ups, walking laps around a track and standing at the back of the classroom." Sez the Times: "The measures considered as indirect punishment were running laps, standing in the back of the classroom or being sent to be alone in a separate room."

What's wrong with this picture? I'll grant you that beating students with broomsticks is indefensible, but hasn't the pendulum swung a bit too far if you can't even send them to time out?

2) In response to the devastating earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, the government will begin an earthquake-readiness inspection on school buildings nationwide. According to the Korea Herald, the last such inspection was in 2008, following the Sichuan, China earthquake that killed 70,000 people.

On Friday, the ministry conveyed a set of school safety guidelines, including those for building structure, during a meeting with school officials across the nation.
Under the plan, local educational offices have to complete the inspection on all the school buildings by May 20 and submit renewed safety plans.

3) Dads take interest in kids’ education, reads the top headline in the JoongAng Daily's Education section. The story reports on mostly middle school "Fathers' Committees" which get involved in curriculum and extracurricular activities such as sports clubs and the like.

Several dads interviewed talk about how they now spend more time with their kids, feel closer to them, etc. But the money quote, at least for me, was this:

“Fathers tend to speak frankly about students, so sometimes it’s easier to talk to the fathers rather than mothers,” said Lee Jin-ee, a teacher at the school.

Put another way, mothers have an unwavering belief that their child is special, gifted, and a genius, and if the child is not at the top of the class, it's all the school's fault. Father, as Robert Young would say, knows best.

Notebooks and Cellphones

Notebooks: On the bulletin board at the back of my classroom I have a list of class rules assembled from the "Class Rules" lesson the second week of school. One of the rules says:

I will come to class on time, with my materials, prepared to learn.

I ask them several times in the first couple of months exactly what materials that is talking about. They know it refers to a) notebook, to write things in; b) pen or pencil, to write things with; and c) brain, to know what to write. (While the class is Conversation, writing things out first gives them greater confidence in their generated language, especially early on.)

Despite all this, many classes have about 1/3 of students show up with no notebook. What's up with that? Well, anyway, this post is not going to complain, it's going to celebrate those who do bring their notebooks, particularly that genre of notebook with sappy or nonsensical English printed on them. To wit:



"Take you wonder by wonder; Open up your heart and greet the world as it is. We can always find joy and love wherever our eyes rest."



The small print makes up for the macro gibberish, being quite profound in its odd way: "We all have our own ability. The difference is how we use it.  If it's your limit, you can't exceed it; if you exceed it, it's not your limit."

Remember, a high school boy picked this out.

"A champion is someone who has won the first prize in a competition, contest, or fight."  Fair enough.

Cell Phones: Chapter two in our first grade textbook is about cell phones, so I've begun a three week unit on the topic.  Actually, this week is mainly an opportunity to do some research in Multiple Intelligences Theory, thinly disguised as a lesson on cell phones.  It is a follow-up to the research review I did in lieu of a winter camp when not enough students signed up.  The first activity is a dreary, lengthy inventory to help classify students in terms of their stronger/weaker intelligences (again, do find out about this theory, from Howard Gardner at Harvard, if you're unfamiliar with it.)

I introduced the activity with a Kim Yun-a Samsung Haptic commerical, seen at YouTube; Yun-a is Korea's figure skating champion, and a national heroine.  The point of the ad that I try to bring out is that she is not only a skater--she writes, she sings, washes her dog, and rolls around in her bed.  We all have many abilities, or kinds of "intelligence", etc, etc ...

Part 2 of the lesson is some light-on-the-English fun sparked by this Korean cell phone commercial (thanks, Nck!):




Thinking about their responses on the inventory, they are to create their own ideal smart phone with the features that they want most to have.  I give them a hand-out with a sort of blank cell phone on it, and they invent new apps and create icons for them, and provide English labels.  Of course, they're supposed to chat with each other in English during this process.  Here are a few results from classes so far:

Finding a person I want to meet, doing exams instead of me

"19" refers to restricted movies, a common meme, there's also a hotpack and a fan

Instead of an Apple product, this guy likes Grapes

I like the "sleep well" app (and its sheep icon), and the secrets box

Some of the more inventive apps include the anywhere bathroom finder, plastic surgery detector, find out if someone likes me, and the "heartbreaker".  "You sure you mean beartbreaker?" I asked.  "You want to leave sad, desperate girls behind as you go through life?"

"Yes," he said, with what I think he imagined was a rakish grin.  "They can lov-uh me, but I can heartbreak."

Club Saturday

On Saturday, I met up with Nick and The Stumbler for some pre-season baseball at Mok-dong yagu-jang, Home of the Heroes.

The hapless Heroes (Oh, come on now, it's not even the real season yet!) took a drubbing from the very mediocre LG Twins, something like 8 or 9 to nothing. But that doesn't really matter. It was baseball, it was springtime, it was the sun on our backs!

That's pretty much my modus operandi (or em-oh as we fans of Adam-12 called it in my childhood) on a Saturday in spring. Ballgame or park or market. My SMOE contract is Monday through Friday. I know I taught the public speaking class on Saturdays last semester, but that was fall and winter. It was also a big sacrifice, even if the remuneration was pretty boss.

For Korean students and teachers, however, Saturday is still a school day. At least the first and third Saturdays, and the fifth if applicable, and at least until noon. The alternate Saturdays, 놀토 nol-to, are a day when they can go to hagwons early.

At my school, Saturday is club day. Music, art, yearbook, magazine, etc. So it at least lacks some of the drudgery of Korean-style math or "self-study"--though I suspect there is both a math and a self-study club. And maybe even a self-study math club.

Anyway, I found myself in a rather awkward situation last week, on account of club day. Twice, actually. Here's what happened.

Towards the end of lunch on Wednesday, a group of six or so freshyears came to my class, nervous and polite, the way they are, and presented me with a perfectly written letter asking me to ... sponsor an "English movie-watching club" on Saturdays. They even had a list of objectives.

Then on Friday, one of the seniors--one with very passable standard English skills--asked me if I would form an English Conversation club for Saturdays.

Well, what would you do, Dear Reader?
a) Laugh in their faces and ask if they can share whatever mind-altering drug they've obviously taken.
b) Become so touched by the desire of these students to speak English that in an ill-considered gust of emotion you say "Yes".
c) Pretend you don't understand English, and just repeat "Mulayo, mulayo". Then, when they switch to Korean, you switch to French.
d) Tactfully explain that they have a great idea for a club, but the [mean old] government won't pay you to work on Saturdays, so you aren't allowed to do it; however, you will talk to the "Administration Department" and see if a suitable teacher can be found.
e) Tell Minsu that he's welcome to come by during lunch for a chat like 'Harry' used to do, or Taewon. Just have some ideas to talk about and understand that sometimes it's not convenient.
f) Angrily phone up your "handler", cussing out him or her for failing to prevent these pesky students from bothering you during the five minutes of peace and quiet you get during the lunch break.

Education News

1) This week's education news roundup opens with the headliner, "More 'fat schools' north of Han River", detailing the increase in overweight and obesity among Korea's youth. Welcome to the First World, Taehan Minguk!

According to data obtained by a member of the National Assembly’s Education, Science and Technology Committee and reported in the Joongang Daily, 64 of 1,276 Seoul schools were "fat", meaning 20 percent or more of the schools' students were overweight by BMI measurement.

The article tried to make sense of the data by purely geographic means: north of the river, "nine out of the top 10 schools with the lowest obesity rates were found in Songpa," eight "fat schools" in Gangseo (my district, but certainly not my school), etc. Random pins in a map, really. I suspect a more meaningful breakdown might be accomplished by a socioeconomic rubric...

Education, Science and Technology Committee member Rep. Park Young-ah commented: "There is a need for schools and also the government to provide measures for physical education, health programs and education on right eating habits."

No one mentioned the report I blogged about last year that 60 percent of Seoul high schools plan to cut P.E. classes for 3rd graders.

2) Students cry foul over soaring fees

According to a governmental report, Korea’s college fees ranked second-highest among OECD members following the U.S. in 2007 when it marked $8,519 a year for private schools.
In a separate report by the National Assembly, the annual university fee reached 7.5 million won in 2010 for private schools and 5 million won for public schools. The amount exceeds 10 million won for medical schools. Adding costs for class materials and lodgings, the money easily surpasses 10 million. The sum amounts to about 23 percent of the average Korean’s income of 32 million won.

Debate and discussion of soaring higher education costs promise to monopolize the policy chat forums for some time to come, since the problem seems as intractable as it is in the US. University costs are rising faster than private sector incomes. For instance, the article says that 189 private universities had 7,353 buildings in their campus in 2008 ― up 279 from the previous year ― suggesting that 1.5 buildings per school have been built within a year.

Detractors suggest that new buildings are just another way for universities to increase slush funds, pointing out that:

As of 2009, Ewha Womans University, Yonsei University and Hongik University have been piling up 738 billion won, 511 billion won and 485 billion won, respectively. Korea University, which has recently announced a 5.1 percent tuition hike, has also set 230 billion won aside. The amount of reserves for these prestigious schools has risen by double digits over the past three years, despite their complaints.

Interesting stat:

[U]niversities have been stingy about investing to enhance students’ and professors’ capacity and aptitude. The KHERI found the private universities spent only 0.9 percent of their budgets on books for their libraries. The portion has risen only 0.04 percent over 10 years. On average, the number of books per student is 58.5, a far cry from Stanford’s 703 and MIT’s 259 in the United States.

Well, okay, but I wonder what that ratio is at, say, University of West Georgia. Ah, 47.

During the 2008 election cycle, the Lee Myung-bak campaign promoted a "half-tuition" policy, whereby the government would fund half of a student's tuition costs. However, it seems to have gone nowhere, and is currently "at the forefront" of the main opposition Democratic Party's platform for next year's elections.

3) Story K Research Center of Youth Intellectuals Forum (whatever the hell that may be) has released a report touted in yesterday's Dong-A Ilbo about pro-North Korea bias in Korean history textbooks. Before venturing any further, it must be said that the DongA is the "rightest" of Korea's right wing dominated media. And they are very poor about labeling opinion pieces as such. For instance:

On North Korean leader Kim Jong Il handing over power to his youngest son Jong Un, five of the six textbooks surveyed used the term "inheritance" or "formation of inheritance structure" instead of "succession." In a father-to-son power succession, something which is hard to find in a civilized society, use of the term "inheritance" to describe the event is inaccurate.

Possibly there's a translation issue, but I don't see the huge difference, since succession means "the right of a person or line" to take over. That North Korea has reverted to a feudal power structure seems obvious, and both terms seem to me adequate for relaying the fact.

The five textbooks also turned a blind eye to the human rights of North Koreans, who are suffering under dictatorship and suppression. One of the textbooks that mentions human rights also blurs the subject by saying, "An issue more important than human rights, including political prisoner camps in North Korea, is the defection of North Koreans who are suffering from hunger."

Well, if the textbook mentions human rights, it clearly didn't turn a blind eye, though it may have given them short shrift. I don't know, I would need to read the text. However, it could be argued that the starvation deaths of 3 million people is more important than maybe 200,000 people in political or re-education prison camps, at least from a purely humanitarian perspective. No one is arguing that things north of the 38th are going well.

The article is correct that it is wrong to say NK is "suspected" of developing nuclear weapons, when it has detonated two such bombs; however, it's rather simplistic to deny the role of antagonistic foreign powers in spurring the regime on. While the Clinton administration had effectively reined in Pyongyang's nuke program, the swaggering, tough-(non)talking Bush approach clearly raised tensions and whipped up Kim's paranoia. Rightist oversimplifications of history are no less dangerous than simpering lefties'.

The new textbooks have been published after undergoing a string of obstacles and struggle, including legal battles, amid social consensus that left-leaning history textbooks should be corrected following the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak administration. Nevertheless, textbooks meant to view the North as an "immanent being" and to overlook objectivity and historical facts have not been corrected. This is believed to be closely related to the structural problem of South Korea’s history sector. Amid an overly nationalistic perspective over history, the environment of a certain school of South Korea’s history community that accepts and justifies everything on North Korean history is apparently worsening this problem.

The Korean culture wars, like those of America, are so often fought in the classroom. To quote T. Jefferson: "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."