In which I am a pawn in system

Did anyone catch all the Tiger Mom/asian parenting discussions in US media a few months ago? This WSJ article succeeded in scandalizing and inflaming a slew of supposedly insecure soccer moms and generating quite the debate. It was interesting to be following the debates right after arriving in a Tiger Mom motherland of South Korea, and in fact, finding myself a key player in their system.

Three blog posts ago, I was feeling a bit frustrated about work. In fact, its not all that bad, I don't find it productive or helpful to be negative all the time, and I try hard to be a cultural relativist, but there are certainly some things about the culture of education in Korea that grate on me when my mood is low.

Let me begin with an essay sample:

"I agree that school breaks are important. Because the students must study Monday to Friday. Also plus the second and fourth weekends' Saturday. We are very tired. We are very hard. We got so many stress. Unfortunately we also have study on Saturday and Sunday. Because our mother wants us to study even more words. So we go school, academy and study at home agin. Our everyday life is the same! So we need rest. It is school breaks. School breaks is student's only rest time. If there are not school breaks, students will be Zombies!"

I had another essay (which I didn't think to save) where an elementary school student wrote about how skipping school is wrong because you will not be able to get perfect attendance, and that school is where you learn about decorum and rules.

It is painfully obvious that Korean students are under quite a bit of stress (if it's not, please refer to my last post). And here's where I come in. After spending the day at school, kids can't go home to have an afternoon snack, watch cartoons, and play with their neighbors. They trudge over to my academy to sit through 2 hours of english grammar and 1 hour of english conversation. If they fail their vocab test that day (which many do, as they are expect to memorize about 100 words per class), they have to stay after class to do a retest. So no wonder so many of my students are morose. I've got students who would rather use the time in my class to study their vocab than practice speaking. And I can empathize. When I was in elementary school I had a few classmates that took after school Spanish and French classes. At the time, I remember expressing contempt/confusion ("why would you do that?") although now that I actually can appreciate the utility of being bi or even tri-lingual I wish my parents had subjected me to the same. A kid can't be expected to understand the value of learning a language from a native speaker. And I'd like to further argue that perhaps a kid shouldn't be expect to do so.

I came to the field of education from the context of environmental education, and especially Last Child and the Woods and the No Child Left Inside movement. The idea behind these is that interacting with the outside world is extremely beneficial to childrens' development. When playing outside, children are not boxed in/defined, and can learn to create/express/use their imagination. Children learn to socialize on their own. Children learn how to entertain themselves. Furthermore, it's been shown that spending time in nature helps limit symptoms of ADD/ADHD, and of course helps combat child obesity. Additionally, a lot of people have been studying how so much learning happens outside of the school classroom, and sometimes students are shown to be much more receptive to information gained experientially rather than academically.

I came to Korea with this notion that children learn best when they are happy, excited, engaged. That different children (people, even) have different learning styles. That learning can happen in informal, unstructured environment as well as, if not better than, in the school environment. The problem is, education is not viewed like that here. My academy seems to be particularly rigorous, and the idea is that things need to appear serious here. We've been told that mothers prefer books without pictures, because they look more academic, and that pictures on the walls look unprofessional. Whenever my students write essays about their goals for the year, or what they want to be really good at, they talk about becoming the top of their class. Whenever you asked them what is the worst thing that happened to them, they write about recieving a bad test score.

That being said I have some really delightful students who are willing to learn. Sometimes only because they want to score well on their college entrance exams, but at least they are willing. And I have some younger students who are still in the point in life where they are just little sponges, excited to grasp any concepts. But I can't help but feel a little depressed when I read an essay that says: "some students say students also have human rights and we can express our personality. I agree this opinion. And, frankly speaking, I was to disappear school rules, so I want to let my hair grow long."