Wow I ignorantly assumed this was an American problem. I feel better/worse knowing that it isn’t.
The state of education in South Korea is so unbelievably worse than everywhere except actively war-torn and oppressed countries. It’s really, really sad.
Several years ago, I considered teaching in South Korea and just a cursory glance at the education industry there immediately turned me off from ever wanting to try.
As someone who taught at all levels of the South Korean school system for about fifteen years, it’s not that bad. Teachers are way way more respected than in American schools.
Kids are generally happy up until second year of middle school then the admin tightens the nuts on them and forces pretty rigorous testing. Schooling shifts from a more western style school to basically spending all day every day learning to do well on the college entrance exam. It’s pretty soul crushing for students and teachers. They really just have to replace their college entry exam with something that can be taken more than once a year. That would solve a lot of problems with the system they have in place.
What issues do they have?
That’s incredible. I didn’t know that, as a American.
All I thought was Korea’s youth were filled with happy-go-lucky kpop young adults who are a lot more self-sufficient individuals than Japan’s youth.