Hagwons

I am writing a reasearch paper and doing a multi-modal project on South Korean Hagwons. Part of my project is to analyze sources and rhetoric that extends beyond the usual textual sources. For this, I searched the web. The first source was from Time Magazine, so I will be talking about the picture they posted in their 2011 article on South Korean "cram schools". (Picture posted below).

Picture Credit:http://img.timeinc.net/time/asia/magazine/2011/1003/360_skorea_school_1003.jpg

 

This picture is interesting for several reasons. The first is that the students in the pictrure are reviewing English. I would be willing to say that studying extra after school at a formal institution for a foreign language is a foreign concept for most Americans. In my experience, foreign languages are not heavily focused on during the High School and Jr. High days, although I'm sure there is always an exception.

 

The second reason this is interesting is because, in the picture, all the students shown are looking down at their paper. In a lot of American classrooms, I would consider myself lucky to take a picture of students and have all of them looking down at their work at the same time. It is possible that the students are behaving because there is a photographer there, but I believe the message is the same: these students are working hard. Hagwons are not a fun place to be, but a place to work and study. It is interesting how much information can be gleaned off of a seemingly innocuous photo, but I believe the picture above speaks volumes as to how the hagwons operate.

Scholarly Sources

For any high-level academic paper, one must acquire a plethora of sources. But not any piece of information in the world is considered "good-enough" to be a source for an academic paper. Because papers build on top of papers, it is very important that the building blocks are accurate. Therefore, papers either use direct evidence or a scholarly source to verify the information presented.

For my upcoming research paper on the subject of South Korean education, I was tasked with finding several scholarly sources that will help me with my argument. Using the Texas A&MN library database search, I found the following article: Does Cram Schooling Matter? Who Goes to Cram Schools? Evidence from Taiwan. First, I had to verify that the source is scholarly. I concluded that it was based on two things: The style of writing, and the publisher. The writing style was written using academic jargon, with an abstract, outline, and its own list of scholarly sources. The article was published by the Department of Sociology on Tung-Hai University in Taiwan. Based on those two pieces of information, I naturally concluded that the article was scholarly. But now I must find out if the article will help me for my topic.

The article has four main points. I will list them here: The first main topic is how these "cram schools" got started in Taiwan. The article lists the reasons they think the schools started, and how they developed over time. The beginning is necessary to discover their purpose today, and whether or not it may be different than the purposew was originally. The second main topic is how the cram schools help/hurt students' grades. The point of cram schools is obviously to help, but a good evaluation of cram schools is necessary to determine whether or not they are doing their job. The third main topic is similar to the fourth: Who attends cram schools? Not all students do, but are there any socioeconomical patterns? This relates to the fourth topic: How family status is no longer an indicator of what kind of private, extra schooling (re: cram schools) a student may attend.

Overall, I think this article will be of great help, even though this article covers Taiwan and my paper covers Korea. The culture and ideas are similar enough to apply some of the reasearch done in Taiwan to South Korea.

My Experience as an Exchange Student in Korea

In the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I got the unique opportunity to visit Seoul, South Korea, as part of an exchange program with the University of Texas at Austin. I took several courses there, so I was eligible for a college exchange program. My experience as a foreign student was one that I will never forget, and it has changed the way I view education today.

Before I went to Korea, I made decent grades and had really high SAT/PSAT scores. I was being considered for the National Merit Scholarship, and I was hoping to get into MIT. I used this when I pitched the study abroad program to my parents. It would be expensive, but I argued that it would let me stand out on an application and might even get me into MIT. They eventually relented, and I was off. However, after my first week there, my idea of what education meant was totally changed.

The courses were similar to any course I might take in America, except they were Korean related. I took a Beginning Korean Language course and an Introduction to Urban Sociology course. Both of my professors were native Korean but spoke good English. The courses were interesting, and I enjoyed learning more about the country I was so interested in. What was shocking, however, is that, for the first time since I was a baby (I presume), I did not only learn in a classroom. I learned every second of every day as I explored Seoul. In my opinion, when we are babies, we tend to learn based upon our surroundings. We experience new things every day, until eventually we are familiar with everything and must learn from secondhand experience, often by being taught things out of a schoolbook (and not through direct experience). In Korea, I was sent back to a time when I didn't understand the world around me. Everything was new and waiting to be experienced. I tried foods I never would have tried, such as dog meat and fried bugs (that was on a field trip to China). I did activities I never would have done, such as singing in Karaoke (called Norae-bong). I even went to places I never thought I would be able to go (the JSA and partially North Korea). I realized that throughout my life I thought I was "doomed" to only learn through textbooks and lectures. However, during my trip to Korea I realized there were plenty of things to learn from experience. The world was not yet done teaching me things.

To wrap it up, I think my discovery changed the way I view education. Here, in America, I believe it still has applications. I believe in the power of experience though labs in chemistry, experiments in physics, and project-based learning. Doing is a much more powerful vessel for education that simply telling. I understand the importance of book-learning. Some information was discovered through experiments that can't (or shouldn't) be repeated. However, I believe there is lost potential in the students that lose interest in book-learning because they see no way that the information applies in the world.

Movies and Culture

Movies are an interesting phenomena. Most people could not normally sit still for two hours in the dark, however when you give them something to watch, suddenly people will not only willingly sit in a dark room, they will pay often ridiculous prices to do so. Something about movies resonates with a bit of our humanity: these movies depict people doing things we could never hope, or doing things that we wish we had the courage to do. Sure, other kinds of movies exist that do not fall into these categories (such as comedies, documentaries, and many horror films), but the ones that do provide a unique insight into the values our culture holds in high esteem.

For example, take the new movie released just last week, Olympus has Fallen. I will not spoil the movie for those that have not seen it yet, however I will possibly "spoil" this: America wins. The movie, in case you are unaware, follows a secret service agent who has not been on active duty for eighteen months as he attempts to single-handedly retake the White House after it was taken over by the North Koreans. Several elements of the movie stood out to me, one being the security measures the movie depicts that protect our White House. One scene in particular involves the secret service agents hurriedly taking the president out of harm's way. The entire plot of the movie, in fact, is contingent upon high-ranking US officials being more willing to  sacrifice millions of innocent lives than sacrifice the President's life. But why is this considered so patriotic, even at a time when the country is so divided over the actions of the President? I believe that the movie demonstrates the same effect that occurred after 9/11. After the September 11th attacks on our country, our country was unified in a unique way that can only happen after a tragedy. People who are normally split by political party banded together to support the one cause of our nation: Seeking out the terrorist who committed the atrocities. The move Olympus has Fallen allows viewers to relive that emotion of unity. When an audience watches this movie, they will feel themselves cheering for America. Not democratic America and not republican America, just America as a nation. This movie is an especially important movie in today's divided nation.

Movies almost always have a point to them. More often than not, the point the movie is trying to make is also making a statement about the culture we live in today, and popular movies represent finding a commonality in the target audience. Olympus has Fallen, I believe, was popular because it ignites the patriot in all of use and reminds us that we are blessed beyond belief to have our most worrisome problem be balancing a budget.

Nothing Without Proof

High School is a rough time in one’s life, for many reasons. People like to quote biological and emotional reasons, but high school can sometimes be hard educationally as well. This is not always because the classes are hard, but often times because they are setup in a way that is a different pace and organization than Jr. High and elementary classes, much in the same way the college classes are often times not dramatically more difficult (although in many cases they are), they are just different. In my particular case, one of the classes that exhibited this characteristic was my high school English class. I took college English in high school and had the most wonderful professor, however the writing assignments were not always to my liking, and I often times disagreed with my grades when I thought they were lower than they should be. However, the main point of this class was to teach me to write, despite me thinking I already knew how to.

Going into the class, I thought that my writing skills were up to par. Sure, I could use big words here and there; probably convince someone my age that I knew what I was talking about. But when it came to writing with substance, to actually making a point that packed a punch, I was severely lacking. It took a teacher much more intelligent than I to challenge me and point out my flaws to hone my abilities to argue. This was what I learned in my rhetoric class.

As it turns out, this same year I took a Number Theory class at Stanford University. In that Number Theory course, we learned how to prove using all different sources of arguments, and went over, from a mathematical point of view, how to write proofs. As I look back on it now, I got a unique experience in that I got to learn both the math side of argument and the English side of argument within a short time period. I think this positively contributed to my education, and overall improved my argumentative capabilities.

When it comes down to it, I would probably have to attribute any success I have in the future at least partially to the writing course I took in High School. The foundation the professor gave me in writing with a purpose, with evidence and a clear point, has been invaluable in my academic writing at the present, and undoubtedly will come in handy in the future. If I could recommend to any other high school student a certain course to take, it would be a rhetoric course. Even though it will be challenging and seem too rigorous and writing-intensive for high school, the head-start it provides gives an extraordinary advantage not only in college applications, but also in college itself.

A Story From My Father

Stories have great cultural significance, whether they be a story that changes the way a civilization considers a certain phenomenon or a story that makes one thinks about something a bit longer, stories tend to change something, even the stories passed around the dinner table for pure entertainment purposes. One such story came from my father, who was a cargo plane pilot in the navy. A lot of my father's stories stemmed from his Navy past. This probably had to do with the fact that due to his navy experience, he got to visit a lot of different places, from Italy to Kuwait, and many countries that I would have never heard of otherwise.

This particular story involves some country in the middle east, but that is not important. What is important is that it was not a planned landing. Not an emergency landing per se, but a detour from the prescribed path for sure. The problem with this is that now the airplanes were at a foreign airport and did not have enough fuel to return to a friendly airport or to an aircraft carrier. The navy provides pilots with ways to refuel at these airports. One way is to use a military IOU, which is essentially a slip of paper from the US Government that says "We'll pay you back later." One might understand why a foreign, unfriendly airport would be hesitant to take an IOU from the US. Government. The other primary way is with a credit card backed by the US Government. It is just a normal credit card but goes to a military account. Pilots carry these for situations just like this. However, when my father presented this credit card to the refueling crew at the airfield, they shook their heads no. Instead, they motioned to my dad's wallet and said in accented English, "American Express!". They wanted my father to pay with his personal American Express card! So that is exactly what he did. He called ahead to American Express to explain the situation and they pre-approved the transaction, and the order went through. He cannot remember exactly how much it was, but he estimates that with today's price of fuel that it would be around $20,000. Needless to say, my father was anxious to get the military to reimburse him!

The Relationship Status

Facebook  has been in the news more than I can count recently, due in part to movies like The Social Network and privacy scandals involving how Facebook uses their users' data. However, one thing that Facebook does not get much coverage for, positive or negative, is how Facebook affects relationships. The relationship status is something we take for granted on Facebook today. According to the movie, the idea of marking who is taken and who is not was not part of the original plan, but rather came in a sleep-deprived state from Mark Zuckerberg. But today, the relationship status is one key pieces of information people use when looking at the profiles of people of the opposite sex.

In older days, to find out if someone is single or taken, one had to ask. Now, information is shoved in our faces. What does this do for communication? The level of communication required to have any information about somebody has now been significantly reduced. What people do on Facebook when "investigating" a potential love interest now would be considered stalking only a decade or so ago, but now it is the norm, the requirement for staying ahead in the "game". As a result, people are losing the ability to talk to other people. This is an alarming result: if people cannot talk to one another in the real world, imagine the ramifications this will have on the dating scene and intimacy in the future. An interesting trend that would be the subject of a much larger study is the dual rise of both technology usage and divorce rates. It would seem that the increase in Facebook communications, and even texting and phone calls, has reduced the ability of humankind to communicate and resolve problems in the real world.

Its not all bad however. There are definitely upsides to the level of communication that Facebook provides. Facebook allows communication with people that would normally never hear from us again. It also gives us information that gives us the means to establish communication in the real world. However, all this communication ability is pointless if we do not continue to communicate and establish skills in communication in the real world, or else relationships, which one could argue are hinged on communication, will not survive nearly as well.