In the half century after 1945, South Korea went from an impoverished, largely rural nation ruled by a succession of authoritarian regimes to a prosperous, democratic industrial society. No less impressive was the country's transformation from a nation where a majority of the population had no formal education to one with some of the world's highest rates of literacy, high school graduates, and university students. Drawing on their premodern and colonial heritages as well as American education concepts, South Koreans have been largely successful in creating a schooling system that is comprehensive, uniform in standard, and universal. The key to understanding this educational transformation is South Korean society's striking, nearly universal preoccupation with schooling-what Korean's themselves call their "education fever." This volume explains how Koreans' concern for achieving as much formal education as possible appeared immediately before 1945 and quickly embraced every sector of society. Through interviews with teachers, officials, parents, and students and an examination of a wide range of written materials in both Korean and English, Michael Seth explores the reasons for this social demand for education and how it has shaped nearly every aspect of South Korean society. He also looks at the many problems of the Korean educational system: the focus on entrance examinations, which has tended to reduce education to test preparation; the overheated competition to enter prestige schools; the enormous financial burden placed on families for costly private tutoring; the inflexibility created by an emphasis on uniformity of standards; and the misuse of education by successive governments for political purposes.
This comprehensive study omits no aspects of Korean life: its chequered history, brilliant success and aspirations for the future. Its tribal trek from Mongolia via China and subsequent wars to establish independence have taken part in producing a civilisation beneficial to mankind. Its outstanding economic success, formerly attributed to low wages by Western countries unable to compete, results from skill, hard work and an educational system, both public and private, relevant to country and individual. Recently a political revolution has established a democracy as President Chun, father of economic success, retires in favour of a new constitution drafted by ruling and opposition parties: a triumph for the moral stance of 'The Land of the Morning Calm'.
International comparisons of student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading have consistently shown that Japanese and Korean students outperform their peers in other parts of world. Understandably, this has attracted many policymakers and researchers seeking to emulate this success, but it has also attracted strong criticism and a range of misconceptions of the Japanese and Korean education system. Directly challenging these misconceptions, which are prevalent in both academic and public discourses, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced view of the Japanese and Korean education systems. This includes the idea that the highly standardized means of education makes outstanding students mediocre; that the emphasis on memorization leads to a lack of creativity and independent thinking; that students’ successes are a result of private supplementary education; and that the Japanese and Korean education systems are homogenous to the point of being one single system. Using empirical data Hyunjoon Park re-evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing education systems in Japan and Korea and reveals whether the issues detailed above are real or unfounded and misinformed. Offering a balanced view of the evolving and complex nature of academic achievement among Japanese and Korean students, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian, international and comparative education, as well as those interested in Asian society more broadly.
This definitive collection takes an in-depth look at the higher education system in Korea. The editors and contributors present a fundamentally Korean view of the important issues for the Korean higher education system. In systematic, well written essays, they construct theoretical perspectives to analyze the development of the higher education system in Korea's competitive society, a project never before undertaken in the English language.
South Korea's Education Exodus analyzes Early Study Abroad in relation to the neoliberalization of South Korean education and labor. With chapters based on demographic and survey data, discourse analysis, and ethnography in destinations such as Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States, the book considers the complex motivations that spur families of pre-college youth to embark on often arduous and expensive journeys. In addition to examining various forms and locations of study abroad, South Korea's Education Exodus discusses how students and families manage living and studying abroad in relation to global citizenship, language ideologies, social class, and race.
In the half century after 1945, South Korea went from an impoverished, largely rural nation ruled by a succession of authoritarian regimes to a prosperous, democratic industrial society. No less impressive was the country's transformation from a nation where a majority of the population had no formal education to one with some of the world's highest rates of literacy, high school graduates, and university students. Drawing on their premodern and colonial heritages as well as American education concepts, South Koreans have been largely successful in creating a schooling system that is comprehensive, uniform in standard, and universal. The key to understanding this educational transformation is South Korean society's striking, nearly universal preoccupation with schooling-what Korean's themselves call their "education fever." This volume explains how Koreans' concern for achieving as much formal education as possible appeared immediately before 1945 and quickly embraced every sector of society. Through interviews with teachers, officials, parents, and students and an examination of a wide range of written materials in both Korean and English, Michael Seth explores the reasons for this social demand for education and how it has shaped nearly every aspect of South Korean society. He also looks at the many problems of the Korean educational system: the focus on entrance examinations, which has tended to reduce education to test preparation; the overheated competition to enter prestige schools; the enormous financial burden placed on families for costly private tutoring; the inflexibility created by an emphasis on uniformity of standards; and the misuse of education by successive governments for political purposes.
The Condition of Education 2018 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report presents 47 indicators on the status and condition of education. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The Condition of Education includes an "At a Glance" section, which allows readers to quickly make comparisons across indicators, and a "Highlights" section, which captures key findings from each indicator. In addition, The Condition of Education contains a Reader's Guide, a Glossary, and a Guide to Sources that provide additional background information. Each indicator provides links to the source data tables used to produce the analyses.
This book enables Western scholars and educators to recognize the roles and contributions of shadow education/hakwon education in an international context. The book allows readers to redefine the traditional and limited understanding of the background success behind Korean schooling and to expand their perspectives on Korean hakwon education, as well as shadow education in other nations with educational power, such as Japan, China, Singapore, and Taiwan. Kim exhorts readers and researchers to examine shadow education as an emerging research inquiry in the context of postcolonial and worldwide curriculum studies.
This author not only identifies the major shortcomings of the American Public Elementary School, but makes thirty-three specific recommendations as to how to improve them. He does this because he fears America is falling behind other nations, particularly the Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China. He decries the short teaching day and teaching year of the United States in comparison with those nations that are leaving us behind such as South Korea. He pulls no punches in taking on the politicians. In the process parents are not spared as they have exempted their children from walking to neighborhood schools and losing the exercise children experienced in walking by driving them. "Our drop out rate of one third is a disgrace when other nations graduate over 93% from high school," says Hedges. After describing Korean education and making recommendations in the first three chapters, the author then sets forth how modern elementary schools should be and can be organized and operated in contrast with the way so many of them are organized and operated today. This development would help them in contrast with Korean Schools which are more lockstep. He points out that one reason for so many home study children is that parents are not pleased with what the elementary public schools are providing. They want an education tailor made for their children and they set about doing it when the public schools come up short. Too many of our schools proceed in lock step, tracking children into dumb, average, above average, and bright groups when with modern computers this is no longer necessary. Hedges, an author of two books on testing and one on early childhood education, maintains that the testing going on is for all of the wrong reasons, i.e. (1) to evaluate teachers, (2) to compare students with one another, (3) to compare schools with one another. In his view tests should be used as the medical profession uses tests, i.e. to diagnose individual needs and thus to serve as a basis for how to help the student not just give him an A or an F. As he says, “What if when you go to the doctor he hands you a card which gives you a C- on your health. What the devil does that mean?” Instead, the doctor reviews the test data, analyzes it, and gives you a prescription. So why aren’t our schools doing that in education? The book is not only a clarion call to arms, but a practical How To. How to provide for individual differences. How to make sure your child will succeed in primary school. How to organize other than by grades. How to enable more independent study and encourage creativity in your youngster. How can parents tell if their school is any good? How to be clear on the objectives of the school. How should young children be graded and evaluated? This book is for superintendents and principals, as they are the leaders, for elementary teachers as they are the doers, for school board member as they are the policy makers, and for those parents, who want to know what an excellent elementary school should be like. It is not pie in the school dreaming, but a down to earth description of how things are versus how they might be in the modern up to date school. Consider just one of his practical tips for some parents. What can the parent of a a slightly immature child do to increase the probability his or her child will be a ‘smash hit?’ Here is how. Let us say that he can enter first grade at age six. Well, age six is 365 days. If this child was born January 1 he is 364 days younger than the child born on December 31. A whole year! Think what that means in terms of his growth, development, and readiness for first grade! So, throw in that many of the children will be more mature than his child. The result? His or her child is a failure in the eyes of the other kids who are doing so much better than he because America grades on the curve.
What do Buddhist monks learn about Buddhism? Which part of their enormous canonical and non-canonical literature do they choose to focus on as the required curriculum in their training, and what do they elect to leave out? The cultural depository of Buddhism includes some four thousand canonical texts, hundreds of other historical works, modern textbooks, oral traditions, and more recently, an increasingly growing body of online material. The sheer diversity of this mass of information makes the pedagogical choices of monastics worthy of close study. Monastic Education in Korea is essentially a biography of the Korean Buddhist monastic curriculum over the past five centuries. Based on extensive ethnographic work and archival research in Korean monasteries, it illustrates how a particular premodern syllabus was reimagined in the twentieth century to become the sole national Korean monastic pedagogical program—only to be criticized and completely restructured in recent years. Through a detailed analysis of these modifications, the work demonstrates how Korean Buddhist reformers today tend to imitate the educational practices and canonize the textual totems of the contemporary international discipline of Buddhist studies, and how, by doing so, they ultimately transform the local Korean tradition from a particular brand of Chinese-centered scholastic Chan into the inclusive, pluralistic, Indian-focused Buddhism common in English-language introductions to the religion. The book further examines the proliferation of diverse graduate schools for the sangha, as well as the creation of a novel examination system for all monastics. It reveals some of the realities of operating large monastic organizations in contemporary Asia and portrays a living, vibrant Buddhist community that is constantly negotiating with modern values and reformulating its core orthodoxies.
