::A Geek in Korea::

Many of the students in our school complain. This is true of any school, no matter what is assigned, who teaches, and what they teach. The role of students in an academy is to do two things; complain and learn. The role of teachers varies from "complain and teach", to in a good school simply "teaching". The role of parents (usually mothers) in the academy is to complain and hopefully pay for another month of education. Directors tell the teachers what to do, and by extension, the parents and students what they’ll be paying for for the next month. Anything not handled by the teachers is handled by the secretary staff and bus drivers. That’s all there is to running a school.

The school I work in operates in the most competitive area of the city. We’ve literally got schools on top of us and down the street competing for students money. There is only so much time in the day, and there are only so many students to go around. If students decide to go to another school, that’s a loss of potential revenue. This is why the school is constantly doing things to draw in parents and new students.

For example, the vocabulary program at our school is one of the most disliked parts of our curriculum by students. Students must memorize up to fifty words per class up to three times a week. This is followed by hard core cram style testing. Students have only five minutes to complete the entire test, are graded on spelling, and are allowed only a minimal number of mistakes before having to stay after class and retaking the test. Parents are notified of grades upon failure, which raises the stakes (and potential punishments at home for failure) dramatically.

Of all the students that I know to have quit recently, the most commonly cited reason that students wanted to stop studying at our school because of our program was these high pressure tests. Students hate them. They have their test at the beginning of class, then have to wait the rest of the hour while we teach in class before they find out the results. Will they have to stay again? What will their parents do if they fail again? They also take more time to prepare for adequately. Students use every available second of class trying to cram in a few extra seconds to review these words. This is good, but it can be a distraction as well.

Parents are the ones driving this testing. A lot of vocabulary is required to learn a language. This is a simple fact. Learning vocabulary usually sucks. Parents want to see test scores and papers, and students with their faces in books memorizing things. This is what this test produces, so it stays. There are even supplimental programs for internet studying parents can use to increase the amount of studying their children have to do at home.

I don’t know how useful it is, as students don’t retain much of the vocabulary from week to week from my experience no matter how much you test them. Are they learning something? Probably. Is it worth the stress and time it takes for these students to do these tests? Probably not. Students show a remarkable ability to memorize, spit out, and forget. It prepares them for the stress of Korean High School at an early age I suppose.

This week we’ll have announcer contests, more homework, and lots of vocabulary tests. We do this because of competition with other schools. If we didn’t pile on homework and do lots of extra events to test students, they’d move elsewhere. If whippings were shown to motivate students to learn English, we’d be given Cat o’ nine tails. Hell, we have a bamboo caning pole in the school already, although I’ve never seen it used for anything other than pointing.

I’ve worked at the "we offer everything" sort of school, the "friendly school", and the "fun" school, but this is the "hard core" school. I hope the parents are happy with the results.

technorati tags:hardcore, parent driven education, esl, cram