Education and Students in Korea

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Education and Students

Education and Students in Korea

Korean student on slide South Koreans are under intense pressure to excel academically. This pressure begins in elementary and consistently becomes more apparent up through high school. Oddly, once a student is accepted to university, more often than not, the intense cramming evaporates and social life becomes paramount.

Types of Students by Age Group

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

Be prepared when you enter the classroom. Remember always that you are a teacher first and that students respond best out of respect. Plan well, control your classes, motivate your students and many of the challenges will take care of themselves.

Let students be students...

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

First let me start by saying when I first started teaching abroad, I was NOT a teacher. I was not motivated to move across the ocean to inspire kids. I wanted to be a teacher because it was the only opportunity for me to explore the world on a shoestring. I had no money and a whole lot of debt... how else was I going to get anywhere?

Now that you know my altruistic intentions, you are probably guessing that my classroom was a joke.

Critical Comments on Education in Korea

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

This is a perspective of someone who is in a small relatively new institute and is the only native speaker there. We have three Korean teachers and myself. Often I feel that my role there is more about providing the students with the opportunity to have contact with a native speaker. That being said this is my take on the education system in Korea as I have come to understand it.

Education for the Gifted

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

Public education in Korea has long been criticized for reducing the intellectual level of students by overemphasizing equality at the expense of individual differences in scholastic aptitude during the past three decades.

That accusation is not misplaced, given that almost all students are given cookie-cutter education at school. They use the same textbooks, work the same hours and learn from the instructors using the same teaching methods. This uniform public education has contributed to promoting expensive private tutoring in the nation.

Education System - described by the Korean Ministry of Education

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

The school ladder system, the backbone of the school education system, unified structure connecting the different school levels. Korea has a singletrack 6-3-3-4 system which maintains a single line of school levels in order to insure that every citizen can receive elementary, secondary, and tertiary education without discrimination and according to his or her ability.

Korean Classrooms Most Crowded

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

OECD (Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development) report shows lower secondary education class-size averages of 35.8 students where OECD reports the average at 24)

Korea also spent excessively on education in the private sector compared to other countries, the report said.

The OECD, the Paris-based grouping of wealthy countries, released these and other findings entitled "Education at a Glance." The organization gathered and analyzed the academic statistics of 30 member and 19 nonmember countries between 2001 and 2003.

The average number of students per classroom in Korea was 35.7 for elementary schools, the largest of all surveyed OECD countries. In junior high, it was 37.1, far larger than the OECD average of 23.7.

50/50 - What are Students Like

Korea Information - Education and Students in Korea

The percentage of wonderfully respectful and well-behaved students to those that are completely the opposite is about 50-50.

One thing that I was surprised to encounter is that in a traditional Confucianism society/culture, I expected that more students would respect people of authority and those of elder status. However, this seems to apply more to Koreans than to foreigners. About half of the students are quite rude and unruly towards foreign teachers. This might have something to do with the language barrier and testing the limits of what they can get away with, but I believe most children know what is right from what is wrong (generally). Fifty percent of the students I encountered are really interested in learning English and they treat you well. The other half of students don’t want to be there, and therefore are quite rude, disruptive, and uncooperative in the classroom. Kids will be kids regardless of the location or nationality. There will be those that are great to teach, and those who you would rather not have to see on a daily basis. Either way, the kids will teach you something about yourself. Good luck.