[JSR] Editor’s Column - IB in Korean Schools
“Asking bizarre questions and thinking deeply about a subject takes time, and in that time, other kids are going to study and become better than you.” comments an anonymous 18-year-old Korean student. Take into consideration the study conducted by Seoul National University Professor Lee Hye-Jung, titled “Who gets the best grades at top universities?”. In this experiment, in-depth interviews were conducted with the 45 highest achieving students at Seoul National University, a highly-regarded Korean University.
In average, the results showed that these students share the following self-regulation strategies: 1. Handwrite everything that the teacher says in class; 2. Have a receptive attitude rather than a critical attitude. With the exception of the students who have high grades, Seoul National University also consists of critical and creative individuals; however, they all have low grades. No matter how ingenious one’s ideas may be, he/she has to abandon them if they differ from the professor’s. These findings show that the Korean education has been taking the wrong path for a prolonged time.
Though this contemporary education curriculum may seem like a potential solution for Korea’s unscrupulous education system, teachers and parents have not been happy about it. A majority of teachers acknowledged the disadvantages the Korea IB students will be in when applying to college. This is because their GPAs will be significantly lower due to the fact that universities in Korea will still heavily weigh students’ grades and IB students’ GPAs will not be compatible in the numbers game.
In comparison with the parents’ perspectives, the parents also had similar views towards the implementation of IB in Korean schools. “When I asked my kid’s school about the IB curriculum, they had no idea what it even was. Cram schools (tutoring academies) actually told me what’s good for my kid’s education, like reading books and the newspaper. If schools aren’t going to budge even when our government is trying to change the education system, the only place an anxious parent can rely on seems to be cram schools,” replies Kim Ji-Youn, a 42-year-old mother.
To some extent, the IB curriculum can be seen as more rigorous than what Korean students in public schools are encountering right now. Their courses are as difficult as university-level courses, and the assignments assigned for each subject is highly demanding. Imagine IB, a highly western curriculum, to be utilized in South Korean schools. Not only will people dissent with the system, but also teenage suicide rates will increase as students are faced with an education system they have never experienced before.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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