I have had a pretty good introduction to Korean culture through my dozen or so Korean high school students, and through them I’ve become seen with how motivated and eager they are as students. With one exception – the worst of my students happens to be a Korean boy – they are by far my best students. For the most part, they are more mature and more motivated than the Chinese and Thai students. They are the kind of students that make teaching much easier.
It’s not that the Chinese students are lazy or less motivated. Most of them are good students, too, but the Korean students (again, all but one) are unbelievably hard working. It seems that education is highly valued in East Asian societies because of Confucian values – to respect and learn from your elders – and from the strong, closely-knit families – the school principal often tells the students, “Study harder so you can please your parents.” And the students are all really close to their parents and often say how much they look up to them and they work hard in school because their parents have invested so much in children. And the education system pushes them pretty hard; the Chinese teachers are strict and teach class with a very serious manner. The school day begins at 7:40 a.m., when the students have to be in the classroom to clean, and it ends at 8 p.m. after a 1½-hour post-dinner study period.
While the Chinese students go home and play computer games all weekend, the Korean students spend much of their weekends in the classrooms studying. I can never give them enough homework because they do it all and then they study more on their own. A couple of them are going to take the SAT later this year and they hand me practice essays to critique and I work with them on vocabulary and reading exercises during lunch breaks and on Sundays. Their relentless work ethic makes me work harder because I really want them to succeed. They put so much effort into their schoolwork that I feel obliged to work along with them, either by putting in extra time helping them with English and SAT practice and studying Chinese together (I join the three Korean who have no prior Chinese experience in their introductory Chinese class). It would be a great feeling to help see them go onto universities in the U.S. They are obsessing over SAT scores and personal essays on college applications already and bombard me with questions about everything.
Like in the article, some of the Koreans study subjects independently. One boy last semester was studying for the AP Government exam, even though he was starting from scratch with no knowledge of American history or government. Another kid this semester is studying Spanish in addition to his daily Chinese and English classes. Naturally, I help both of them outside of class when I can. And some of them take academics to the extreme. One Korean girl, who has studied English for less than two years, has already caught up to the other students who have had six years or more of English, although she has studied to the point where she falls ill several times. And when they live at a boarding school and spend a good part of every evening and weekend studying, they don’t have much of a life outside of school.
So without ever stepping foot in South Korea, I already get the sense that education is a high national priority. Thy are fully aware that English language skills, a high math and science aptitude, and a college degree are key to being competitive in the world economy. And Korea is highly competitive – its economy is the 12th largest in the world, ranks fourth in the number of international patents in 2007, and its education system was ranked the best in the world in a UNICEF study on student performance on math, science, and reading, and has more students studying in the United States than China, India, or Japan. Not bad for a nation of only 49 million people.
(Contrast that with education in the U.S.)
Education has certainly played a large role in Korea’s rise from one of the poorest nations in the world in the middle of the 20th century that was devastated by the Japanese occupation and the Korean War to one of the most developed nations (highest penetration of broadband Internet and the first country to switch entirely to HD television) with a high life expectancy and standard of living, on par with western Europe and the United States. In fact, economic predictions place Korea near the top in income per capita in the coming decades (I came across this graph in a report on emerging economies). By 2050, South Korea will have an income per capita equal to or higher than Japan and many western countries:
Speaking of South Korea, the Olympic torch was there a couple days ago and it wasn’t pretty.
“When lone protesters demanded that China stop repatriating North Korean refugees, they were quickly surrounded by jeering Chinese. Near the park, Chinese students surrounded and beat a small group of protesters, news reports said.
“In another scuffle, at the city center where the five-hour torch run ended, Chinese surrounded several Tibetans and South Korean supporters who unfurled pro-Tibet banners, and kicked and punched them, witnesses said.
“The largest scuffle erupted shortly after the first torch-bearer left the Olympic Park, surrounded by dozens of police officers on foot or on bicycles and hundreds more in buses and trailed by a water cannon, ambulances and helicopters circling overhead.”
At least my Chinese and Korean students get a long. There are even three Korean-Chinese couples among the high school class.
If the torch is such an emotional flashpoint for things that have nothing to do with an international sports competition (Tibet, media censorship, worker’s rights, repatriation of North Korean refugees), why is China parading it around the world? And why do protestors think extinguishing the flame will do anything about those problems? I know that public awareness of all the wrongs in the world is important, but flying the torch around the globe, surrounding it with dozens of security (and a water cannon and helicopters), and storing it in four-star hotel rooms all seems a little absurd.
Happy May Day! (known as 五一劳动节 here)
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