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The Koreans must love their kids
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12-11-2009 11:18am#1
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Asians in general are quite studious and hard-working (I think I generally conform to the stereotype).
And it's not just about respecting young'uns - it's more to do with discipline and respecting your elders. Though this is changing of course (see the problems Japan is having with its youth).
And please - Koreans play Starcraft not WoW
- at its peak it had 3 tv channels dedicated to showing matches between top players (who also had hot Korean girl groupies too...)
Quite often it's out of necessity that people work hard - nothing gives you more imperative to succeed than to know you'll be a peasant if you don't get into university. And on the flip side, my cousins back in China had very little of a childhood - studying 16 hours, 7 days a week leading up to the Chinese Leaving Cert (and Junior Cert). But that's what fierce competition will do to you - if you're not the best, there's 40 million other people behind you waiting to take your spot. Irish kids don't know how good they have it
See the difference between a Chinese pre-uni exam and a first year English uni exam:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6589301.stm0 -
minidazzler wrote: »Wow, I don't think I have ever seen a thread go on a tangent so fast.
Koreans take school seriously, they are cool I think!!!
I know..but jsut the mention of that gimp pissed me off
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Asians in general are quite studious and hard-working (I think I generally conform to the stereotype).
And it's not just about respecting young'uns - it's more to do with discipline and respecting your elders. Though this is changing of course (see the problems Japan is having with its youth).
And please - Koreans play Starcraft not WoW - at its peak it had 3 tv channels dedicated to showing matches between top players (who also had hot Korean girl groupies too...)
Quite often it's out of necessity that people work hard - nothing gives you more imperative to succeed than to know you'll be a peasant if you don't get into university. And on the flip side, my cousins back in China had very little of a childhood - studying 16 hours, 7 days a week leading up to the Chinese Leaving Cert (and Junior Cert). But that's what fierce competition will do to you - if you're not the best, there's 40 million other people behind you waiting to take your spot. Irish kids don't know how good they have it
See the difference between a Chinese pre-uni exam and a first year English uni exam:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6589301.stm
That's kind of scary... just how poor the standard of maths in the UK apparently is. They stop doing maths at 16 because it's "too hard" and then go on to do science degrees? I won't pretend I could do the prism question now but I'm pretty sure I would have been able to do it no bother back in school.0 -
That's scary.
No wonder they are going to take over the world. The sheer difference in hard work.0 -
That question is hard (I was an A1 honours maths student and got bogged down after 15 minutes). Of course it's been a few years since I've sat the maths paper. I do remember the hilarious case whereby one of the honours papers in the L. Cert had a triangle where all three sides' angles added up to 183 degrees... It's not just the English who have problems in the maths department
Here's the pdf solution to the Chinese question: http://www.rsc.org/images/Mathematicssolution_tcm18-86553.pdf - it was solved by a 34 year old engineer.
However, for the amount of rote learning they do, they get less time to be "creative" - creativity is also subjective and thus harder to mark.
It's a balance between the two systems that's needed in my opinion, studying poetry is all well and good, but if students no longer know how to spell or use grammar correctly then what is the point of knowing Shakespeare's sonnets? I daresay that most Chinese top university students understand English grammar to a much higher degree than students in a top English/Irish university.
I can't find the original BBC News article on this but CBBC will have to do - some students have started to write English exams in "text-speak":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2197000/2197770.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/2814427.stm
I'm not a grammar Nazi but it is a worrying trend!0 -
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That's scary.
No wonder they are going to take over the world. The sheer difference in hard work.
The work ethic is frightening - both in terms of how much they work and also the effect it has on the poor children who are in this rat race.
Instead of a race to the bottom, we get a race to the top - because there are so many students taking university exams (10 million a year I believe) for limited spaces it is a dog eat dog world. Whereas over here, anyone who wants to get into university can (funding issues aside).
The old joke is "when a child in England/Ireland etc comes home with 98% on a test the parents are delighted, when a child in China goes home with 98% the parents ask 'how did you lose the 2%?'". It's a tough life living as a child in China - I certainly wouldn't want it for my child. But when losing those 2% could be the difference between placing joint 1st and number 50 in a class, parents and children have very little choice except to knuckle down and study.0 -
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Only one job? Pish - you should try the Hong Kong-ers with their 2-3 jobs.
My Chinese friends are amazed that during our summer and winter holidays we don't have assigned homework (which may take up 80% of your holidays). Not to mention the extra grinds schools you'll attend.
But Mono - what do you see in terms of creativity? Or is it rote based learning too? Do they have time to savour and enjoy the works of their Korean Shakespeare or is it high level maths, high level science etc. all the way?
And you may be slightly disparaging our universities a bit too much - Trinity College is ranked 43rd in the world (apart of other uni's such as LSE and the like). Source being The Times THES report. 0 -
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minidazzler wrote: »I love this post so much!!!
Those of you who are ignorant to the greatness of "Battle Royale" look it up!!!
for some reason i knew it'd be you that got that before anyone else mini
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That question is hard (I was an A1 honours maths student and got bogged down after 15 minutes). Of course it's been a few years since I've sat the maths paper. I do remember the hilarious case whereby one of the honours papers in the L. Cert had a triangle where all three sides' angles added up to 183 degrees... It's not just the English who have problems in the maths department
Here's the pdf solution to the Chinese question: http://www.rsc.org/images/Mathematicssolution_tcm18-86553.pdf - it was solved by a 34 year old engineer.
However, for the amount of rote learning they do, they get less time to be "creative" - creativity is also subjective and thus harder to mark.
It's a balance between the two systems that's needed in my opinion, studying poetry is all well and good, but if students no longer know how to spell or use grammar correctly then what is the point of knowing Shakespeare's sonnets? I daresay that most Chinese top university students understand English grammar to a much higher degree than students in a top English/Irish university.
I can't find the original BBC News article on this but CBBC will have to do - some students have started to write English exams in "text-speak":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2197000/2197770.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/2814427.stm
Yeah from what i remember doing of those maths Olympiad things in school, Olympiad-type questions were regarded as standard for the Asian (Chinese/Korean?) LC equivalent apparently.
And IIRC the top spots were all dominated by them.0 -
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Yeah from what i remember doing of those maths Olympiad things in school, Olympiad-type questions were regarded as standard for the Asian (Chinese/Korean?) LC equivalent apparently.
And IIRC the top spots were all dominated by them.
The BBC did a programme on the British Maths Olympiad team a few years ago.
The British boys said "anything less than gold medal for the Chinese team is a disgrace". Whereas the team from the UK was ecstatic about their collection of bronzes and silvers. I daresay the guys from the UK enjoy a "better" life though as children.
Even from my days as a participant in the Irish Olympiads - I remember the winner of the (Irish) Maths Olympiad was Indian, the Physics one was Russian and the Chemistry one might have been Irish. It may not be as sexy as playing rugby or football - but the ICT economy that our government harps on about relies so much on whether we have a pool of science, engineering, maths talent in the country.
Apologies for raising the standard of conversation on AH by the way! 0 -
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Instead of a race to the bottom, we get a race to the top - because there are so many students taking university exams (10 million a year I believe) for limited spaces it is a dog eat dog world. Whereas over here, anyone who wants to get into university can (funding issues aside).. 0
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I should have elaborated, but i felt it would clutter my post. Anyway, you are right, Irish schools do have an awful lot of days off, especially with our ridiculously long summer holidays. But having months of nothing but free time does not balance out months of no free time. The need for balance in ones life is a short-term need, not a long term one. In fact I would argue that the only healthy way to live would be to have this balance on a daily basis.
Days where the student is not free untill 8 or 9pm should be a rarity, not the expected and encouraged norm. Most in the workplace get off at 5pm and afterwards enjoy a healthy chunk of free time to persue their own hobbies, teenagers deserve no less imo.
In Ireland I don't see many kids studying till 8 or 9pm. Unless they're off to the Institute to learn how to get those A1 for studying medicine and whatnot.
Unfortunately you're speaking to someone who'll be working 70 hour weeks for the foreseeable future when I enter the workplace. But yes, work/life balance is very important.See, I don't think it really works like that. If you just force information into your brain for the sake of an exam, it's not going to stay with you when you enter the workforce. That's not education, it's pointless.
Now, If i come out of college with a first class honours degree in chemistry am I any less qualified than someone who gets the same degree from the korean system?
My proposal would be to abolish transition year, making the leaving cert a 3 year course but leaving the material to be covered unchanged. With this extra year, everyone can leave school with a much greater knowledge, having learnt most if it naturally (rather than cramming-which means they'll remember it in years to come) and enjoyed a healthy balance between schoolwork and personal pusuits for most of the three years.
True - regurgitating info for the sake of an exam is not helpful, besides demonstrating your ability to memorise facts in the short term. However, from personal experience I can tell you that foreign students coming into the Irish university system (depending on the course taken) often get much higher results than Irish counterparts (of course, the fact that they pay full international fees may be a driving factor too).
For example, one third level institution awarded a Chinese student 100% in some of his college exams (despite his disadvantage in knowing less than perfect English) - this had never happened before in the history of that course. There must be something that they're doing right that we could learn from... One could say the price to be paid to get people who can excel is too high to pay but we should look carefully at whether our system can be tweaked to promote self discipline and study within our children. So I agree with your point that yes a first from TCD etc is just as good as from Seoul Uni (technically I believe they're ahead by a smidgen ) but my point is, the Korean student (under their system) who comes to, say, Trinity - tends to get a higher mark in our system then our domestically educated students (even with the language disadvantage).
As for transition year, I've got mixed feelings about this - on the one hand, well organised years (like in my school) are a fantastic way for a child to relax and learn some "life skills" - we did sailing, life guard training, work placements, first aid training, voluntary work, football coaching, Gaisc, IT skills etc at our school. I hear of stories from friends where they just went to the cinema as a year trip - that is of less benefit to students of course. Funding as always is the issue, the government *should* give greater funds to schools so they can have a more interactive TY but right now that can't be on the priority list.
I would like to see a reduction of the amount of holidays children get - this way we can keep TY (which I believe to be very useful) and still cover the material in a reasonable amount of time (in fact I would suggest that more material should be added to the curriculum). I remember being bored by the end of summer and wanting school to restart so we could get cracking on new materials.
I recall being able to play rounds of tennis in between my leaving certificate exams - hardly the example of a stressed out and under pressure kid I think 0 -
Its all well and good saying to shorten the school holidays but does anyone actually think it'll actually happen.it'd mean an increased running cost for schools(light,heat,etc.)and the teachers would also be up in arms over it demanding more money which i cant see the government stumping up any time soon (thank god).but
in saying that ill be all for it come the end of june 2013 0 -
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Only one job? Pish - you should try the Hong Kong-ers with their 2-3 jobs.
Korea job = at least 12 hours a day, most are much more.
Example, think a software Engineer is a good job ? try working in Korea. 7am - midnight 7 days a week is what my brother in law has been doing for the past 2 years with an occasional exception. And hes a team leader (sort of manager)But Mono - what do you see in terms of creativity? Or is it rote based learning too? Do they have time to savour and enjoy the works of their Korean Shakespeare or is it high level maths, high level science etc. all the way?
Crea-what ?
Korean education system in public school in steps.
1. Go to class.
2. Sit quietly, listening and writing down everything the teacher says. (teacher never stops talking). There is no 'talking time', there is no asking little johnny kim for the answer to number 2 etc.
WARNING: Do NOT ask questions or make any other audible sound.
3. Repeat.
There a lot of specialised schools here. e.g > A highschool dedicated to learning languages, a highschool dedicated to learning science, a highschool dedicated to learning artsy-stuff.
So if you go to a science highschool you never learn any literature/history etc.And you may be slightly disparaging our universities a bit too much - Trinity College is ranked 43rd in the world (apart of other uni's such as LSE and the like). Source being The Times THES report.
Yes and 90% of the top Universities are USA/UK ones. You ever find that a bit 'iffy' ?
The rankings are not accurate at all. They are pro-English speaking western countries.0 -
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In Ireland I don't see many kids studying till 8 or 9pm. Unless they're off to the Institute to learn how to get those A1 for studying medicine and whatnot.
Right from first year till sixth year I was bombarded with the phrase "3 hours study" (4 hours study was even mentioned many a time in 6th year). Now i never did any study and avoided all the homework I could (and subsequently got no As), but an awful lot of people do put in near to the "reccomended" amount of study (especially girls), and most of my friends did from about mid-way through 6th year. I know of at least one boarding school where students are made do 3 hours of study after school each day for all of 3rd, 5th and 6th year. I'm assuming this is the norm. I also know that the homework my sisters were given in their school (it was a public school btw) easily took them up 2.5-3 hours with no study, just homework.
This amount of work is imo, unacceptable. Looking at your post below, clearly we disagree on what constitutes work/life balance. Btw, getting thrashed once a weekend does not give you a balance, the thing about students who get 600 points never going out is a myth. It's the regular day to day enjoyment of life that they miss out on.Unfortunately you're speaking to someone who'll be working 70 hour weeks for the foreseeable future when I enter the workplace. But yes, work/life balance is very important.
True - regurgitating info for the sake of an exam is not helpful, besides demonstrating your ability to memorise facts in the short term. However, from personal experience I can tell you that foreign students coming into the Irish university system (depending on the course taken) often get much higher results than Irish counterparts (of course, the fact that they pay full international fees may be a driving factor too).
For example, one third level institution awarded a Chinese student 100% in some of his college exams (despite his disadvantage in knowing less than perfect English) - this had never happened before in the history of that course. There must be something that they're doing right that we could learn from... One could say the price to be paid to get people who can excel is too high to pay but we should look carefully at whether our system can be tweaked to promote self discipline and study within our children. So I agree with your point that yes a first from TCD etc is just as good as from Seoul Uni (technically I believe they're ahead by a smidgen ) but my point is, the Korean student (under their system) who comes to, say, Trinity - tends to get a higher mark in our system then our domestically educated students (even with the language disadvantage).
I would be one of those people who thinks the price is too high. Yes he might do better in exams, but that's because he's putting in an insane amount of study, an amount no-one should be expected to do. Formal education should only account for a small percentage of your knowledge/understanding. People should be free to engage in independant learning and develop their talents. And also, i've seen the exact opposite happen aswell, students coming over here getting caught up in the easy life and realising towards the end that they're ****ed.
Why? I think the leaving cert is enough for people as a minimum of formal education. If they want to learn more they can go to college. "Life skills" should be spread out over all years, not confined to one.As for transition year, I've got mixed feelings about this - on the one hand, well organised years (like in my school) are a fantastic way for a child to relax and learn some "life skills" - we did sailing, life guard training, work placements, first aid training, voluntary work, football coaching, Gaisc, IT skills etc at our school. I hear of stories from friends where they just went to the cinema as a year trip - that is of less benefit to students of course. Funding as always is the issue, the government *should* give greater funds to schools so they can have a more interactive TY but right now that can't be on the priority list.
I would like to see a reduction of the amount of holidays children get - this way we can keep TY (which I believe to be very useful) and still cover the material in a reasonable amount of time (in fact I would suggest that more material should be added to the curriculum).I remember being bored by the end of summer and wanting school to restart so we could get cracking on new materials.
Just because your intellectual interests were covered by the school curriculum doesn't mean everyone's is. I think you are exceptional in this regard.I recall being able to play rounds of tennis in between my leaving certificate exams - hardly the example of a stressed out and under pressure kid I think
Well good for you, wasn't the case for lots of other people though.0 -
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