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.