Quantity vs Quality

I see this time and time again. Education in Korea is not about quality, it is about quantity. If there are 800 students in a school, those 800 students must all have English education – the same English education. This flies in the face of logic, since the large majority doesn’t want to learn and have been taught to not care since an early age.

When I was teaching the first level of middle school which is like the U.S. equivalent of 7th grade, I was told (a few times) to try to make the lessons more fun. Now, I can understand having an entertaining and interactive lesson, but I can’t understand the practice of continuing to use the English classroom and native English teacher as a source of games.

This practice is started at an early age. Students are taught that English class is a time for fun, not a time for real learning… When they get to middle school, it has already been deeply ingrained into their minds and they don’t want to learn.

The native English teacher is here to ‘play’ with the students. It is not so much of an English class as it is a cultural awareness class. Hence, why native teachers are here in Korea; they prefer people without skills. They want more pawns to do their bidding. The younger and less educated the native teachers, the more ripe for manipulation they are.

The standards for teaching in Korea have slowly been reducing over time. It once was a four year degree (in anything) was all that was necessary. Now, even that one restriction has been whittled down to two years. An example of this is the TALK (Teach and Learn in Korea) program that tries to target college students. Also, recent pay scales have been allowing people with two years to ‘teach’ with lower pay.

Korea has been relying on the influx of job seekers coming from other countries to fill its native teacher ranks. Due to the economic rut, Korea had, recently for the first time, an over abundance of applicants. Korea is still doing what it does well – throw money in the air.