"You understand that the public school's duty is to teach English textbook memorization. That is the most important thing. It is not our job to teach use. Parents must pay for their students to learn this [at private, after-school academies (학원)]."
I smiled and said, "Of course." But in my mind I was screaming expletives and lunging at him over the boiling pot of soup.
I work in a small, rural school and many families can't afford private tutoring at 학원. My co-teacher once told me that about two students in each class go to 학원. Now, compare this statistic with city kids where the mass majority go to 학원 daily to get ahead in courses and future college exams. This educational disparity is directly linked to the future success of these students.
It frustrates me to no end that most of my students already know their fates at 15 and that public education is okay with this outcome and doesn't do much to combat the imbalance. Plus, it confuses me to see all of the foreigners in the classroom teaching memorization from a textbook. Why is South Korea filling it's schools with people whose biggest asset is an opportunity to speak freely and learn expression, slang, and general English use when they don't want us to veer from the text?
Furthermore, textbook memorization stifles student development and satisfaction with English learning. More often than not, my struggling students keep a glazed look of discomfort on their faces as we make our way through the lesson, only perking up when I announce a game or opportunity for occasional points/chocolate. For a nation that wants so earnestly to be a welcoming environment for English speaking tourists, making English education a drudgery of too-specific phrases and odd reading passages further repels locals from using and wanting to learn the language.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="281" caption="Some of my students barely enter the Understanding tier of Bloom's Taxonomy."]
[/caption]I respect Korean culture a great deal, but I just can't seem to accept this aspect of education. Maybe it's pride for my rural students or my Western ideology...
Dismounting the Soapbox,
-Bets
