Hank Pellissier at GreatSchools examines the education system of over-achiever South Korea:
…South Korea is often regarded, along with Finland, as one of the two premier K-12 education systems in the world — in no small part due to the spectacular academic performance of its students. According to a 2006 survey by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which evaluates the scholastic performance of 15-year-olds in 57 nations every three years, South Koreans rank first in reading, third in math (tied with Hong Kong), and 10th in science (tied with Liechtenstein). More than 97% of South Koreans graduate from high school, the highest graduation rate in the world.
South Korea emulates the pressure-cooker classroom environment common in Japanese schools:
South Koreans attend school 220 days per year, almost two months more than the 180 days of Americans. (The Japanese enroll an astonishing 243 days per annum; South Korea abdicated first place in 2005 when its students ceased going to school half days on Saturday.) What distinguishes South Koreans from everyone else, however, is the immense number of hours they study outside the classroom. High schoolers, and even middle schoolers, in South Korea are often engaged in scholastics until midnight or 2 a.m. After taking classes in up to 11 subjects, they attend private academies called “hagwons” where they obtain supplemental learning. The bottom line? Most South Korean children spend 13 hours a day or more with their bottoms glued to a chair.
Should Western schools try to emulate this intensity in an attempt to match South Korea’s outstanding performance? The answer is a resounding NO. Finland offers a far better model.
Although these grueling schedules help South Korea’s high test scores, the nation is remarkably inefficient at another PISA criterion known as “study effectiveness.” When PISA calculates each nation’s achievement based on the number of hours spent studying, South Koreans rank only 24th out of 30 developed nations. The winner in study effectiveness is Finland, the world’s true PISA champ, placing first in science, second in math, and second in reading. Finnish students only attend school 190 days per year (two weeks more than U.S. children) and receive less than a half-hour of homework per day.
Finland is #1 in study effectiveness, achieving outstanding results with little of the “meat-grinder” approach common to so many education systems:
Never burdened with more than half an hour of homework per night, Finnish kids attend school fewer days than 85% of other developed nations (though still more than Americans), and those school days are typically short by international standards…..Finland downplays educational competition in a number of ways. Schools aren’t ranked against each other, and teachers aren’t threatened with formal reviews. At many schools, teachers don’t grade students until the fifth grade, and they aren’t forced to organize curriculum around standardized testing….
Surely this is a model worth emulating? I would be interested in the views of any readers who are employed in education.
Read more at Great Schools: The Finnish Miracle
and Great Schools: Lessons from South Korea
You are quite right but will we give up our authoritarian model based on US educational theories. Under this model teachers are blamed for failure and ministers and Directors take the credit for success. You see the bureaucracy is full of mediocre former teachers and the minister has no teaching experience so he goes around in a fog generated by the bureaucrats. What do you think of an organisation that changes the regional superintendants to regional directors. You have thousands of intelligent dedicatied teachers who are reduced to the state of ciphers, sandwiched between complaining parents with poorly behaved kids and a compliant principal.
I couldn’t agree more regarding the Finnish education system. As a parent of 3 asd children and two having burned out in grade 3 with depression and over burdened by an antiquated public system that does not recognise children for who they are but is more concerned with teaching and testing without considering the impact of their ways.
Schools should be like a nursery — where plants are fed and watered and allowed to grow — and not a sausage factory where everything is ground to a consistent paste before being molded into a uniform shape.
Yes, having been nurtured in a green house, they withered the moment they are placed out in the garden under the hot sun!
Interesting view. Are you saying that life is tough and so the best preparation children can have is to be thrown in the deep end?
The problem with “experts on education ” is the vast majority have no experience teaching. Even doctors of education are generally people that hated teaching and failed at it. You need successful teachers to give an opinion just as you need successful doctors to advise on health. One of the biggest problems in education today is the quality of some parents and the lack of support they give teachers. You don’t need many badly behaved kids to destroy the opportunities of the rest of the class. Many parents are so stressed paying rent or mortgage that they don’t have enough time for the kids.Blame that on the banks and our fearless leaders.
There appears to be too much “command and control” with teachers required to complete endless reams of paperwork to the extent that it crowds out lesson preparation and other more productive time. The Finnish system seems to emphasize two things: teacher quality and trust in them to do a good job. No amount of control from above can compensate for this.
I don’t think we can hang this on the banks and our fearless leaders. The problem lies a lot closer to home.
Exactly my point. the stress levels in the modern home where both parents need to work full time to pay off the mortgage or rent or to save for a house way exceed that in former years. For instance most mothers did not need to work. The consequent neglect and stress in the home transfers to the kids who can no longer accept any discipline in the class room. When I started teaching in 1988 you could talk to the kids, not anymore, it is the me generation today. Unbelievable, one kid asked me how much money I was earning and boasted his parents were making $250,000 pa. I asked him how he was going to earn so much. Dealing drugs was the answer. It’s a different world cobber and we have made it that way.
John,
“…neglect and stress in the home transfers to the kids who can no longer accept any discipline in the class room”
This is a serious problem and cannot be fixed in the classroom. What do you think can be done about it? A Singapore-style discipline structure? Discourage working mums? Educating parents? Solutions are elusive.
As the man says we have to look at the way we are structuring our society. As long as we follow the American model we are in trouble. Note that they are out of control look at the mess they make of the Ebola outbreak. For god,s sake when I was in Oregon in 2006 they shut down the schools because they ran out of money.We should be looking to other economic models. The success of the Nordic systems of education relate to their social structures. While your social structures are dysfunctional so will your education be. Ours is very good but is going backwards.
For political systems I would choose Switzerland as a role model.
For economic systems, there are some interesting models being tried in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. The Swedes are moving away from their Scandinavian welfare model. It would be hard to find an ideal model. Canada?
I view education like resistance training in the gym. Start with very low weights and gradually increase the resistance over time. Rather than drop a 250-pound barbell on their chest and expect them to cope.
Give me a break Colin. Kids are not the compliant individuals you assume. Your views are old fashioned. Of course you experts know how it should be done , so why don’t you get in there and show us? Bet you will quickly change your point of view.
Interesting comments. Some Asian cultures, with an emphasis on educating kids in a very controlled environment, have issues of management in the workplace where consensus is often preferred to assertive leadership. Finland has always been a place with strong scientific and mathematical “genes” and with some deep academic thinkers. In order to achieve in the real world it’s probably horses for courses with regard to cultures and individuals. Israel is another case in point where innovation and thinking outside the square is encouraged and nurtured in the army where most youngsters serve after high-school. So in spite of a somewhat chaotic school system, the genes and survival instinct have produced an over-achieving society. One size definitely doesn’t fit all.
And thanks Colin for your great work in your field.
Thanks M,
How do we teach children to problem-solve in a 3-dimensional world, rather than in a one-dimensional academic environment where you are given the solution and then an array of problems to solve using the formula? The real world tends to work the opposite. Often the biggest task is to define the problem. Then you have to consider an array of possible solutions, often with imperfect information available.