Korean vs American school system

[Mai72]

The test scores are in and our students get a F! Under the Common Core education guidelines the standardized test that the children take are much harder. Even charter schools failed miserably.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/08/common-core-in-crosshairs-after-schools-get-f/

We are getting creamed internationally. Our math and science scores are abysmally low. If you compare our scores to countries like South Korea, we are getting trounced. What's the solution?

Are teachers in South Korea better at educating their students? I don't think so. They mainly use a route style of teaching, which was taken from the American school system 60 years ago. I've witnessed a few classes where the teacher will just shout at the children and they repeat what the teacher just said. Korean educators do not teach critical thinking skills to their children. They don't incorporate holistic teaching, scaffolding, metacongnition skills, and differentiation into their lessons. How could they when class size is normally 40-60 students?

Yet, they score at the top in science and math. The one thing that struck me when I first arrived in South Korea was the amount of time students spend in school. When they reach high school they are normally in school from 7:30am-7:00pm. They then go home and do homework. The cycle just repeats. Weekends are spent studying and cramming for test. After school programs are necessary as well. English, math, piano, violin and science schools are filled with children. This just doesn't happen in America.

Asian parents are more involved, and they have higher expectations then Western parents. I just read a book titled "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." It's a very interesting look at how a Chinese mother brought up her children. She used the tough love approach. Maybe it was a bit extreme. Most Asian mothers tend to be very strict. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Tiger_Mother

There are plenty of negatives. Korean students are miserable. They have the 2nd highest suicide rate in the world. The stress that these children face is immense. Parents, teachers, and society put a lot of pressure on students to excel in the classroom. Good paying jobs are scarce as well. Most students want nothing more then to get into the best colleges. Competition is fierce!

The world is drastically changing. When our children reach adulthood, will they have the skills to compete with workers from other countries? I can only imagine what the workforce will be like in 20 years. There are no easy answers, but something has to be done.

 

[ivwshane]

They may have more book smarts but my guess is that Americans are more creative. What's the ratio of patents/inventions to citizens look like?

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

 

[1prophet]

They may have more book smarts but my guess is that Americans are more creative. What's the ratio of patents/inventions to citizens look like?

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

Americans with critical thinking skills, before or after they elected bush/obama twice?:awe:

the real reason education ain't getting any better, be happy with what you have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGL8FEMc378&list=PLDABB868FBFF48D01

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

 

[Agent11]

I bet if we re imposed corporal punishment in schools things would improve, I wouldn't be opposed to mandatory military boarding schools for troubled students either. Most dipshits at that age just need to be put in a structured environment and given a chance to succeed.

The problem is both parents and children who do not take education seriously.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

They may have more book smarts but my guess is that Americans are more creative. What's the ratio of patents/inventions to citizens look like?

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

Exactly. Chinese people would probably completely destroy Americans in science and math as well, but we all know that they are horrible when it comes to originality, creativity, and problem solving.

Now, what I fear is that Americans are starting to suck in creativity and problem solving *as well*.

 

[Franz316]

I'd rather have critical, creative, independent free thinkers than book regurgitaters. I'm not a big fan of standardized testing for this reason. It's still important to know the information however. I think it can be mixed with critical thought using more essay-like tests where students actually have to formulate an idea and back it up with knowledge. Multiple choice should hardly ever be used. The American education system kind of lacks in both areas since we stress standardize testing and eliminate the creative programs when there are budget cuts.

Innovation ultimately comes from creativity.

 

[irishScott]

My dad is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at a major university. He's worked with a lot of foreign graduate students over the years, and a couple of years ago he mentioned something interesting to me, specifically concerning ethnic Indian students. He noted that, generally speaking, if you give them a problem and tell them there's an answer, they accomplish the task just fine. However, if you give them a problem and tell them that there may or may not be an answer, they break down and usually fail to solve the problem, even if there is an answer.

Which goes back to the downside of intensive memorization as an educational model. It teaches them formulas and their applications, but it doesn't teach them how to derive new ones. If it's not in their mental encyclopedia of knowledge, they're hamstrung.

Bottom line, beating education into somebody with 12 hour school days will not produce a Steve Jobs.

 

[Dari]

Funny, I see millions of Asians coming here to live and go to school. I don't see millions of westerners going to Korea or China to live and go to school...

 

[GTaudiophile]

1. I think you start by getting rid of unions and remove job security for the shit teachers of which there are indeed many; the great teachers will rise to the top and won't need to worry about job security. Conversely, you pay the good/great teachers amazingly well. We're talking $80K to start with great health benefits, etc. No matter the state. This will also encourage great potential teachers working in other industries to get into the education system. Teacher pay scales would also be uniform within a state.

2. At the same time, we also REMOVE standardized testing in favor ONE written AND oral exam that all students take at the end of every school year that serves as the grade exit examination. Depending on the percentage of students that get a 2.0 or better, the teacher gets a pay bonus. If too many fail, the teacher may not get a job offer for the next year. This written/oral exam would be aligned with various common high standards that would be similar from state to state. A student is held back or sent to a "special" classroom if he/she fails to pass the grade exit exam. No kicking the can.

3. Starting at the 9th grade, students would have the choice of either taking a college-prep high school track or a vocational track. This would model the German system whereby students in the latter track would learn specific vocational skills alongside more traditional high school curriculum but instead of applying for a college at the end of 4 years, they would apply for paid training positions with companies. While at these companies for 2-3 years of training, they would split their time between working within various company departments and returning to the vocational classroom to learn subjects that reinforce their on-the-job training. In Germany, this is known as the Dual System. After three years, the student would be certified in a specific vocation that would be recognized (transferable) by all companies. The trainee would also most likely receive a job offer to remain at the company that trained him.

4. Funding equalization. (This is the most socialist of all my comments.) Schools may continue to be funded by property tax revenue but I would argue for something more stable in light of the recent crisis. A time of crisis is not the time for schools to suffer financially. Quite the opposite should be true. Perhaps school funding could shift away from property taxes and instead to state income tax revenues? In any event, funding would be equalized. Meaning, rich counties would have to support poorer counties to create more equal learning environments.

5. The school year. Gone would be the 12-week-long summer vacation. In its place would be a 6-week summer vacation. The 6 weeks "lost" would be added to other vacations throughout the year: fall break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, etc. Each of these would be longer. The school week would also be different. For example, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, students would focus on four core subjects like math, English, social studies (government/econ/history), and science only for longer class periods of at least 90 minutes. Tuesdays and Thursdays would have class periods of the same length but focusing on mandatory foreign language, art, music, and ethics classes. (Religion/ethics is mandatory in German schools). Each school day, Monday-Thursday, would end with 45-60 minutes of PE because Americans are too fat. Mandatory foreign language instruction (choice of German, Spanish, or Mandarin) would start at 4th grade at the latest, if not earlier.

 

[Doppel]

The test scores are in and our students get a F! Under the Common Core education guidelines the standardized test that the children take are much harder. Even charter schools failed miserably.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/08/common-core-in-crosshairs-after-schools-get-f/

We are getting creamed internationally. Our math and science scores are abysmally low. If you compare our scores to countries like South Korea, we are getting trounced. What's the solution?

Are teachers in South Korea better at educating their students? I don't think so. They mainly use a route style of teaching, which was taken from the American school system 60 years ago. I've witnessed a few classes where the teacher will just shout at the children and they repeat what the teacher just said. Korean educators do not teach critical thinking skills to their children. They don't incorporate holistic teaching, scaffolding, metacongnition skills, and differentiation into their lessons. How could they when class size is normally 40-60 students?

Yet, they score at the top in science and math. The one thing that struck me when I first arrived in South Korea was the amount of time students spend in school. When they reach high school they are normally in school from 7:30am-7:00pm. They then go home and do homework. The cycle just repeats. Weekends are spent studying and cramming for test. After school programs are necessary as well. English, math, piano, violin and science schools are filled with children. This just doesn't happen in America.

Asian parents are more involved, and they have higher expectations then Western parents. I just read a book titled "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." It's a very interesting look at how a Chinese mother brought up her children. She used the tough love approach. Maybe it was a bit extreme. Most Asian mothers tend to be very strict. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Tiger_Mother

There are plenty of negatives. Korean students are miserable. They have the 2nd highest suicide rate in the world. The stress that these children face is immense. Parents, teachers, and society put a lot of pressure on students to excel in the classroom. Good paying jobs are scarce as well. Most students want nothing more then to get into the best colleges. Competition is fierce!

The world is drastically changing. When our children reach adulthood, will they have the skills to compete with workers from other countries? I can only imagine what the workforce will be like in 20 years. There are no easy answers, but something has to be done.

You have some strong points.

However, I'd like to see how the American school system performs when you pull out the chaff. In my school district the high school graduation rate is high 90's. One town over it's about half that. The difference is in mine you have middle-class kids from two-parent households and next town over lower-class from one-parent (and yes the school systems receive similar amounts of money per child for their budgets). It clearly would make no sense to use the district over performances to motivate possible changes in mine.

It's increasingly clear to me that little can be done academically about impoverished kids from single-parent households, living in slum areas rife with crime until those confounding factors are addressed.

Another question we need to ask them is: Are America's strong and excellent students comparable to Korea's strong and excellent, or Germany's? I imagine this has been asked, and I also imagine the differences are far more subtle.

 

[CPA]

It's "rote" not "route". Which school system were you taught in?

 

[nehalem256]

The biggest problem with the American School System is the students.

 

[Nintendesert]

The biggest problem with the American School System is the lack of enough recess.

 

[cyclohexane]

They may have more book smarts but my guess is that Americans are more creative. What's the ratio of patents/inventions to citizens look like?

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

let's get our kids learning how to read, and do simple math - before worrying about patents and inventions.

 

[Jaskalas]

A good portion of our system is being strangled by ESL students as well. Yes, I had to throw that in there. You look at the demographics for a place like California, and there's no question what the problem they face is.

 

[StrangerGuy]

let's get our kids learning how to read, and do simple math - before worrying about patents and inventions.

Exactly. Worry about "problem solving" and "creativity" only after you get them to know basic science and math.

 

[Yongsta]

They may have more book smarts but my guess is that Americans are more creative. What's the ratio of patents/inventions to citizens look like?

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

Ever look at the engineers at the tech companies? How about the newest influx of car designers? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121311527578861039.html A lot of video game companies opened up in Korea in the past decade. A lot of new artists and designers.

A lot of Korean parents spending A LOT of money on their kids for Hagwon (so they can go to the best universities) but there's also a lot who tell their children to go into industries that weren't really looked at positively before (ie pianist & composition - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-4wUfZD6oc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_patents Korea has a large # of patents applied considering the smaller population. Resident filings per million population: 1. Japan 2. Korea 3. United States

 

[Dannar26]

Bottom line, beating education into somebody with 12 hour school days will not produce a Steve Jobs.

Are the tests mostly memorization testing or does it also include critical thinking questions?

It's why we do software and movies so well. An oversimplification is China being the mindless labor that makes the stuff we had ideas for. You know, unless they try to steal said ideas...

Gee, I wonder why a country with such awesome test scores wants to steal intellectual property from a country with abysmal scores in the same fields?

Americans with critical thinking skills, before or after they elected bush/obama twice?:awe:

Because there's nothing stopping the mouth breathers from clogging up the polls.

I bet if we re imposed corporal punishment in schools things would improve, I wouldn't be opposed to mandatory military boarding schools for troubled students either. Most dipshits at that age just need to be put in a structured environment and given a chance to succeed.

The problem is both parents and children who do not take education seriously.

This. So this.

However, I'd like to see how the American school system performs when you pull out the chaff.

Same here Doppel. These studies are alarmist in that they compare the scores of gang bangers in training to the spawn of these "tiger moms." We're also a lot bigger than South Korea. They probably need a higher percentage of their population to be competitive than we do.

It's increasingly clear to me that little can be done academically about impoverished kids from single-parent households, living in slum areas rife with crime until those confounding factors are addressed.

Absolutely. All the iPads, computers, teacher salaries, and facilities in the world won't matter to derelicts who dream only of becoming the next Kobe or Kanye.

But, I guess it's political suicide to embrace this truth. So until our the prevailing attitude becomes more realistic, and we remove the phrase "I deserve" from our national narrative, we'll have all this useless wheel spinning of taxpayer funds.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

I think it would be better to look at countries like Norway Finland for education. They spend less time in class than Americans and don't have the craziness of Korea and Japan, yet their results are top notch. Drilling information into children's minds 12+ hours a day isn't the right way, its a brute force approach, not an intelligent one.

I'm also not sure so much stock should be placed in these standardized test score results, as I can imagine east Asian students being drilled specifically for these tests.

EDIT: Finland, not Norway.

 

[Engineer]

Stuff like No Child Left Behind = All Children Left Behind. This and kids just don't give a shit in this country anymore. As long as they have their iPhone and other stuff, they don't care. Hell, they don't even want to drive anymore (Just saw that the highest percent of teens don't drive, even though they are old enough, since the statistic was started. I see that in my own family).

 

[Nintendesert]

I think it would be better to look at countries like Norway Finland for education. They spend less time in class than Americans and don't have the craziness of Korea and Japan, yet their results are top notch. Drilling information into children's minds 12+ hours a day isn't the right way, its a brute force approach, not an intelligent one.

I'm also not sure so much stock should be placed in these standardized test score results, as I can imagine east Asian students being drilled specifically for these tests.

EDIT: Finland, not Norway.

I really think this is an issue in a lot of American schools. My wife taught at a school that went 4 days a week, so the days were especially long. The kids only had 1 recess. There's just no way to keep an elementary school age kid's attention for that long.

 

[Geosurface]

The biggest problem with the American School System is the students.

Yep.

South Korea benefits from a very homogeneous and well-behaved populace. They don't have to spend any time whatsoever agonizing over trying to get Group A's test scores to match Group B's test scores while pretending Group C's test scores don't exceed them both, etc etc etc...

School systems in the USA have been trying every possible thing they can think of for decades. Most of it has involved throwing more money down the hole, but no matter what they tried... nothing has really worked. The only things which have shown any positive impact are things the public has huge problems with, like more strict guidelines and standards. They complain that these cause more kids to fall behind and drop out.

The fact that nobody wants to face is that some kids are unteachable beyond a certain level, and that them remaining in schools beyond that point just disrupts the environment and impedes the learning of the kids who can continue to benefit from it.

This country used to understand that some people would end up in menial jobs, and that this was okay. There used to even be a greater sense of pride and accomplishment in a hard day's work even if it was in a menial job. But this country got it in our heads that every single student should go to college, and every single student could grow up to be anything they wanted to be... and we sent them the message that the only things they should want to be were high pay, high prestige, high intellect jobs. We stopped portraying jobs which a lower intellectual requirement as being important and dignified in their own right.

The condition American schools are in now is a direct result of decades of teachers telling kids they are special little snowflakes and all of them can go to college, succeed there, and then become an astronaut, archaeologist, lawyer, politician, or whatever.

When kids who aren't mentally cut out for any of that, or for college at all... bump up against the reality of what their brain is capable of, their disappointment and frustration are much higher than they needed to be, because of those false expectations which were set up by well-meaning but naive liberal teachers.

The worst thing of all, though, is that when this mindset failed spectacularly, the reaction wasn't to drop it... but rather to do anything and everything conceivable to try to force reality to conform to desire. Make the tests easier. Make the entrance requirements easier at colleges. Push kids through who shouldn't be graduating, de-emphasize the importance of IQ tests and any sort of standards of objective achievement. Make things like the honor roll into a bad word, because it excludes kids... take away any forms of sports which might lead to certain kids feeling bad, or encourage competition... coat the world of children in Nerf foam and then be surprised when the kids aren't ready to face the real world.

Teachers and administrators no longer view themselves as an important bulwark against unqualified people entering society and getting into positions within society they aren't qualified for. Now it's all about pushing people through so that your own numbers look good. No Child Left Behind was like that, I believe. Do anything you can to keep your numbers right, at any cost. And then there was the systematic policy Miami-Dade Schools adopted of using mental health referrals and school discipline to ensure students weren't criminally prosecuted for outright crimes. Why? Because it would look better for their statistics. Trayvon Martin "benefited" from that policy, but it was shortsighted because it was a disservice to all of the other kids at his school who were less able to learn because of the disruption he represented by remaining in that environment long after he should have been kicked out. And the reduction in standards for what is required to pass a class or a test, which have been implemented to ensure delinquent kids still make it through the system.

And just in case anyone thinks I don't realize there are PLENTY of white kids who fall in this category, believe me I do. I still remember plenty of them from when I was in school. There are kids of every shade who just simply need to be kicked out or put on a different trajectory that they can actually handle.

 

[Engineer]

And just in case anyone thinks I don't realize there are PLENTY of white kids who fall in this category, believe me I do. I still remember plenty of them from when I was in school. There are kids of every shade who just simply need to be kicked out or put on a different trajectory that they can actually handle.

See my post above as to why we can't do that now. Our teacher's hands are tied. I see this year in and year out (wife works in the school and they can literally turn no one away). Short of terroristic threats, it's nearly impossible to remove a student today from the classroom

 

[Slew Foot]

Dont need no fancy edjumacation to cash a welfare check

 

[Geosurface]

See my post above as to why we can't do that now. Our teacher's hands are tied. I see this year in and year out (wife works in the school and they can literally turn no one away). Short of terroristic threats, it's nearly impossible to remove a student today from the classroom

Perversely, we now find ourselves in a situation where it's nearly impossible to kick kids out for reasons which ARE appropriate (complete academic failure, being disruptive, being a criminal) but far too easy for them to end up kicked out or suspended for idiotic reasons which should result, AT MOST in being pulled aside and gingerly admonished by their teacher (chewing a pop tart into a gun shape, pulling a girl's hair, bringing a toy gun to show and tell)