How to be on top - The Economist on South Korean Education
Today I read this article in this week’s Economist. I’ll let it describe in some of its own words what exactly the article is about:
There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.
Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive….
Long-term readers of the blog will not be surprised that I had a problem with South Korea’s inclusion in the above list (for newcomers, see these posts). It is certainly ironic that with sooo many Koreans trying soooo desperately to raise the funds to have their children educated overseas, and with Korean universities welcoming professors with foreign PhDs but saying that their own graduates can not apply, that the Korean education system would be vaunted by an international magazine like the Economist as a model for other countries to follow. Like I’ve (sort of) said en passim here, here, here, and here, but will (finally) say explicitly here, while the Economist’s articles on Korea itself are fine and do seem to be written by people who may even have gone to Korea, every article I’ve read comparing Korea to other countries has simply sucked, never giving any background information about some feature of Korean life and so presenting it completely out of context.
But having said that, I’ll be the first to admit that the above figures are not made up, and Korean students do indeed perform very well on multiple-choice maths and science tests, and hell, probably know more about American History than most Americans. And in the last week or so I have myself superivsed two practice tests that my 19 year-old 재수 students have taken in preparation for their crucial 수능시험 in 22 days, and when I got bored with studying Korean and/or ran out of podcasts to listen to I thought I’d check out their tests for myself. And jeez…even though I was a physics major in my freshman year, even back then I would still have struggled with virtually all of much of the math that all final year Korean high-school students have to know inside-out. Sure, they’re not taught much else, even at university, but other countries could still learn a thing or two from Korea, and the article is definitely interesting and useful. I recommend you read the full thing.
For those of you without the time, it basically argues that the quality of the teachers seems paramount regardless of the country, and discusses the different methods used by those top performing countries to attract and then retain teachers. And here’s what it said of South Korea:
…South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates….[In South Korea]…primary-school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. Getting in requires top grades; places are rationed to match vacancies. In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria. This has produced an enormous glut of newly qualified secondary-school teachers—11 for each job at last count. As a result, secondary-school teaching is the lower status job in South Korea; everyone wants to be a primary-school teacher. The lesson seems to be that teacher training needs to be hard to get into, not easy.
I did not know that! Although the points I made there about the reasons for Korean women’s attraction to primary teaching still apply, this means that the statistics in this previous post now make much more sense.
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The Economist’s article was based on a McKinsey article (which I cannot google or even find on a McKinsey site, and there’s oddly no link on The Economist’s webpage) which is based on PISA (http://www.pisa.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html). PISA is basically a standardized test given to 15-year olds. Right there I’m skeptical, if not only because the 41 participating countries write the test, but that the ROK is if anything over-tested. Also, unless McKinsey has an advanced copy, the last results that were published are from 2003, and 2006’s results will not be released until December.
I know test scores provide an easy way to compare countries’ school systems, but as you know, there are so many other issues in South Korean education that should be reported, but never do. There’s not enough private polling firms in the ROK, so The Economist would be doing a service by doing some research. Like, that is, is teacher salaries a good indication of a student’s chances of leading a good life.
I didn’t realise the tests were written by each country, which diminishes their objectivity somewhat, although naturally I still think Korean students do perform superbly at standardized tests.
When I read your comment last night, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it reminded me of. Then, at 2am, it hit me: studying 10 years ago at University how “Asian Values” and their supposed superiority were seized upon by Australian and NZ politicians to justify their own agendas here (at least before 1997!). Naturally test scores like this, again with no context, were used frequently!
Very sorry surin2sayan, it looks like I accidentally deleted your comment here while getting rid of some spam. If you could write it again, I’d appreciate it!
The report is available at:
http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/ukireland/publications/pdf/Education_report.pdf
You have a strange name, but I won’t hold that against you! Thanks very much for passing that on.
I think Korean education has its pluses and minuses. The big plus is this nation INVESTED in its education system.
I was simply amazed and very impressed by the number of colleges and universities in the small city where I started (that was Yeosu in Jeollanamdo.) I worked at a university there but there were, at least, 4 to 5 other colleges and universities within a one hour radius. And the same holds true for every other community I’ve worked in. That’s crucial to have access for your citizens and to develop your economy. Korean is natural resource poor, so they focused on developing their human resources. That’s basic economics.
For sure there are tons of issues with Korean education. After getting a master’s degree here I’ve seen it from both angles. However, even with its issues, you have to have a population with a certain level of education for economic success. That, for sure, Korea manages to do.
Now they’ve got to up their game and that’s where improvement will come in. However, they’ve done an excellent job with building a system with access for just about everyone. I know in my home country, the USA, that’s still not the case for a lot of people.
I’m only arriving here very late, from a more recent post linking here, but I don’t know, ExpatJane, that I consider it “investing in education” when there are a lot of universities around. My experience, in Jeollabukdo, is that a profusion of universities is generally just an indication of market forces at work, since a fair number of smaller private universities in the countryside — including one I ended up working at for a while in Jeollabukdo — exist not primarily as educational institutions, but as cash cows. In fact, the universality of university education and its notoriously poor quality could be said to be a way in which Korean society has been improverished, not only by the public’s desire to ensure “a better life” for their kids through education, but also by the elite that is willing to exploit this public belief by selling “education” that in no way can do so, and, in some places, selling nothing much more than a piece of paper and a few years’ worth of adult babysitting services.
I’m not talking about all universities, mind you, but this is certainly the case at at least some (perhaps even half) the universities that crop up in competition with one another. They’re in competition for consumers, but they’re not competing in terms of quality of teaching or resources. They’re competing to fill seats and to present the appearance of resources, thereby to get a better ranking from the Ministry of Education. The amount of funny business that goes on in the service of official university rankings is horrifying; hell, even plagiarism, at some good schools. Did you know having an English newspaper or magazine that is “written by students” gives a bonus of a few points to universities? Foreign professors tend to be complicit because hey, money soothes the pain of aiding students in the same plagiarism that is decried in classrooms.
As for standardized tests — yes, Koreans are very good at them, since testing is basically the be-all and end-all of the education system here… though I have trouble imagining that all (or even most) Korean educators — the people who often get corralled into writing such tests — would be completely objective in test-formulation if they go in knowing the exam will be used to set national ranking on the international stage. Maybe that’s cynical, but I know and have known in the part some of the people who do this kind of work, and, well, some are more objective and “reasonable” than others.
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