A month under my belt...

So, I realized that I mentioned the school system a few blogs back and I haven't gone into more detail yet. Maybe it's not the most thrilling topic in the world, but it is interesting.

Ok, their schools are loosely based on our own. We installed quite a few American systems here after the Korean war.......actually, first let me give you a very brief, albeit moderately inaccurate history of this country.

There were many "Ages" that Korea has gone through. It was split in 3, it was unified, it was invaded by Japan, it was invaded by China, it was invaded by Japan, it was invaded by Japan, etc. You get the picture. Before World War 2, Japan controlled all of Korea, and they weren't nice about it. Forcefully occupied is a better term perhaps. In the older generations today, there still exists an underlying, but heated resentment of Japan. Many people have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who were forced into horrible indignities during those years of Japanese control.

After World War 2, we made the same deal for Korea with the Soviet Union that we did in Germany; we each would get half. (i would love to learn more about that deal-making process. can you imagine us giving half of another country to a third country?)

So, South Korea and North Korea go their seperate ways. North Korea went on to be....North Korea, and South Korea became our much littler brother. We built a base here. We helped them modernize and sent them down our oh-so-famous path to democracy.

A couple decades passed and Japan had gone from being an enemy of the United States to one of it's most fervent emulators. They began to prosper and gain wealth/power. Korea recognized this and perhaps became more than a little jealous. By the 70's/80's, the prime directive of the Korean government was to push and push hard. They would become an economic factor in the world by sheer will if they had to.

South Korea isn't blessed with natural resources like we are, so they had to turn to what they had; people and lots of them. "Human Resources" is more than just a business major here. The "Human Resources" ARE the people, all of them, and even today that is how much of this country views itself. They ask a whole lot of themselves and for the most part they deliver.

I wanted to give that little overview, because these are exactly the reasons that I am here today. South Korea wants to be a power like America, and part of that plan is to speak our language. Not learning a second language just for fun or for a "transcript frosting" like we do, but for the betterment of the entire country. It really is a national imperitive. There are tens of thousands of English teachers from all over the world here, and they are all paid much better than Korea's own teachers(many times a sensitive subject in certain schools as you can imagine, since not all foreign English teachers here have a teaching degree or stellar GPAs).

Korean students go to kindergarten, then 1st through 12th grade just as we do. Their school year may be a little longer than us, but not too much. They have holidays and vacation days just like us. The biggest difference is what happens AFTER school. Approximately 80% of the students go to an Academy after stopping at home for a brief supper. Academies, or Hagwons as they are called here are private schools. They operate out of office space in pretty much every building in this city. They can be general or can specialize in subjects, like math, science, Korean, various musical intruments, chess, certain sports, or...you guessed it....English.

The students go to the Academies from about 6:00 to 10:00, some go less, some go more. Many go to Academies on Saturday, and some even on Sunday. Some go on Vacation days, and all students go to summer/winter "camps" during the off months of the school year. When they do get home at night, they start their homework/studying. Most of my middle schoolers don't get to sleep until about 1 or 2 in the morning. It is an understanding between parents, schools, and students that education is THE most important thing during those years of your life.

What about FUN you say?? When do the kids get to be kids?? Oddly enough, in school. They are allowed to be much more rambunctious and wild in school than students are in most American schools. They do their work, but the volume and energy level in school here is MUCH higher than I am used to.

The greatest outlet for their pent up energy is clear however.

Video games

Any spare second in the day is spent playing games. The PC rooms that I mentioned before are constantly filled with students blowing off steam. They're dark, inexpensive, and seem to directly inject digital images into the cerebellums of these kids. Some of the girls will listen to sugarpop music with their friends. Some boys will play a little basketball or soccer. 99.9% will play games. At home I get 47 channels that I don't understand, and 3 of them are video game channels, not where they TALK about video games, not where you get to PLAY video games, but channels where you simply WATCH other people play video games.

Sounds thrilling, doesn't it. Contact your local cable provider.

I could go into the testing process or the universities, but I won't. I think that's enough of a civics lesson for one blog.

So anyways, now it's a little easier for me to understand why some people in the world think Americans are spoiled or overconfidant, because.......we kind of are. Not that we don't work hard or don't deserve all that we have. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is this:

There are literally hundreds of millions of people all over the world working their asses off to hopefully, someday have what we have right now. Let's not waste the opportunities that are in front of us.

laters!

~tony