S. Korea sends out squads to bust kids for...studying...

[Jenne]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html

On a wet Wednesday evening in Seoul, six government employees gather at the office to prepare for a late-night patrol. The mission is as simple as it is counterintuitive: to find children who are studying after 10 p.m. And stop them.

In South Korea, it has come to this. To reduce the country's addiction to private, after-hours tutoring academies (called hagwons), the authorities have begun enforcing a curfew — even paying citizens bounties to turn in violators.



Read more: in link

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

South Korea's hagwon crackdown is one part of a larger quest to tame the country's culture of educational masochism. At the national and local levels, politicians are changing school testing and university admissions policies to reduce student stress and reward softer qualities like creativity. "One-size-fits-all, government-led uniform curriculums and an education system that is locked only onto the college-entrance examination are not acceptable," President Lee Myung-bak vowed at his inauguration in 2008.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html#ixzz1ZH4o7SJf

They're becoming Americanized......

I just, I mean, fuck it.  Our next generations will have company in the vast wash of the undereducated with no goals to succeed at much of anything except Playstaion or xBox.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Wow. I knew that the culture of mind-melting stress over education was deeply ingrained in S. Korea, but this is pretty

[Jenne]

The overkill of these measures on top of the pressure these kids are under is what amazes and saddens me.  These people sending out brute squads are actually treating the SYMPTOM, not the DISEASE.

[Doktor Howl]

My, my...A government that understands that people need to rest once in a while.

How awful.

[Cramulus]

WE MUST DISCIPLINE THIS CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE

[Cainad (dec.)]

The overkill of these measures on top of the pressure these kids are under is what amazes and saddens me.  These people sending out brute squads are actually treating the SYMPTOM, not the DISEASE.

Apparently they're struggling to do both, and the "raids" consist more of the officers going in and telling all the students to go home. The hagwons are what get busted, not the kids for attending them (thank god).

When the necessity of competition gets so culturally entrenched, I can only imagine the extent of measures needed to fix it. The parents get antsy when their kids aren't attending after-school tutoring.

My, my...A government that understands that people need to rest once in a while.

How awful.

Who knows what kind of depraved leniencies they'll be giving out next?

[Jenne]

...that's what I mean, though, Cainad...shutting down the tutoring sites...TEMPORARILY...is not what the disease stems from.  It's the pressure on parents and students to perform perform perform.

Koreans have lamented their relative inefficiency for years, and the government has repeatedly tried to humanize the education system — simplifying admissions tests, capping hagwon tuition, even going so far as to ban hagwons altogether during the 1980s, when the country was under a dictatorship. But after each attempt, the hagwons come back stronger. That's because the incentives remain unchanged. South Korean kids gorge themselves on studying for one reason: to get into one of the country's top universities. The slots are too few — and the reward for getting in too great. "Where you attend university haunts you for the rest of your life," says Lee Beom, a former cram-school instructor who now works on reform in the Seoul metropolitan office of education.

Now, the article says they screen the principals/administrators/teachers to get this sentiment out of THEM...but the fact remains the competition stays strong.  WHY?  Because they have it CULTURALLY INGRAINED within them, through parents, that this is what's necessary.  It's good they're wanting to change the sentiment in the schools themselves, but they need to 1) open up more university spaces and 2) change the fundamental mindset that THIS is what's important, above all else.

Everything else becomes secondary to the main motivational factor.

[Lord Cataplanga]

There is just no way that studying 14 hours a day is the best strategy for passing an admission test, especially if it's the kind of admission test that contains questions about the ingredients in taffy.

I've been in a cram school once, and in those places counterintelligence, nerd sniping and concern trolling among the students were rampant. The students who took their studying too seriously were the ones who were most nervous at the admission exam, and therefore performed poorer.

Maybe it's different in South Korea, otherwise they would have realized that cram schools were a bad idea a long time ago, right? 

[Jenne]

Also, from the article, it seems the government is doing this not out of love and understanding for the plight of the young over-studious student, but rather to keep from becoming stagnant, so revenues INCREASE.

[Jenne]

There is just no way that studying 14 hours a day is the best strategy for passing an admission test, especially if it's the kind of admission test that contains questions about the ingredients in taffy.

I've been in a cram school once, and in those places counterintelligence, nerd sniping and concern trolling among the students were rampant. The students who took their studying too seriously were the ones who were most nervous at the admission exam, and therefore performed poorer.

Maybe it's different in South Korea, otherwise they would have realized that cram schools were a bad idea a long time ago, right? 

You wanna know how often I hear the words "I wanna kill myself" on the tests these guys take?

More often than I should.

They also talk about their parents beating them if they fail.  They also talk about what glorious futures they'll have if WE JUST PASS THEM THIS TIME.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Yeah, definitely. The mechanism by which expensive, excessive tutoring is rewarded needs to be dismantled, and that's not something easily changed by gov't "Band-Aid" measures.

Also, from the article, it seems the government is doing this not out of love and understanding for the plight of the young over-studious student, but rather to keep from becoming stagnant, so revenues INCREASE.

Ain't it always the way, eh? Threaten their wallets, not their moral/ethical scorecard.

[Jenne]

Yeah, definitely. The mechanism by which expensive, excessive tutoring is rewarded needs to be dismantled, and that's not something easily changed by gov't "Band-Aid" measures.

Also, from the article, it seems the government is doing this not out of love and understanding for the plight of the young over-studious student, but rather to keep from becoming stagnant, so revenues INCREASE.

Ain't it always the way, eh? Threaten their wallets, not their moral/ethical scorecard.

Oh, they make it SOUND like that's what's important to them...but it's always and ever going to be the bottom line that's important.

And part of me says:  who can blame them?  We all have eaten our young, in order to succeed and get over the past and move on to the "better, brighter future."  If it's not with war, it's with industry...if it's not with goods, it's with up-your-ass services...*shakes head*  Why should S. Koreans be any different?  What makes them so special?

Why would THEY out of anyone else need to realize lost potential is more than just a failed bullshit exam devised in a different language across 2 seas in a foreign land?

[deadfong]

India has a similar nation-wide exam at the end of high school that determines what college track you'll be on, either #1 sciences, #2 business (I think), or #3 liberal arts, with everyone going to tutoring classes and such so that they can make the grade for #1.*

It's such a big deal, for weeks leading up to the exam there's articles in the paper about kids studying, pressures from parents to do well, etc.  After the exam, the results are public, and the papers are full of articles emphasizing regional pride when student so-and-so got third highest in the nation, and stirring human interest stories about the slum kid who scored top in the city, or whatever.  The stories about the kids who hang themselves over bad results get buried in the back.

*When my wife tells people in India she did liberal arts for her undergrad degree, she gets looks of sympathy and/or condescension, since they assume she did badly on the exam.  When she tells them she qualified for science track but chose liberal arts, they think she's stupid.

[memy]

Why does it have to be so hard to establish a non-suicidal education system?

I feel like South Korea isn't really being Americanized all the way...with the No Child Left Behind act, it was like the entirety of the educational system purposely lagging behind the race to hold the hand of anyone who's in the back, with the promise of a reward for the school if those people get an arbitrary "A" letter grade.

But South Korea is actively trying to get the people too far ahead to just race a little slower, which is an even harder point to get across. No clear incentive other than that these people may have a reduced chance of dying from exhaustion a couple decades before their time.

Either way it's a sad, sad system.