Have you ever wondered how to fix an unfixable mess?
That’s the question that faced José Antonio Abreu, of Venezuela, except for one thing: he didn’t regard the mess that Caracas was in as unfixable. In 1975, he decided that there had to be a way to get kids off the street, away from the innumerable dangers vying for their attention, energy, and lives. He realized that there had to be a way to wake up families, to form communities, to give the handicapped and the poor a chance to be respected and shine.
How?
Music.
I kid you not. El Sistema is now a nationwide, massive program that provides music education to several hundred thousand children–many of them from poorer backgrounds–throughout Venezuela. It has inspired similar social programs in other nations, and has had the support of governments from the far left all the way across to the right.
A few weeks ago in Australia, I heard Kim Stanley Robinson speak multiple times (but especially in his talk at the Utopias 4 conference — hear the MP3 here) about utopianism, for example about how Antarctica hosts an essentially utopian-like community of scientists, and how science itself seems to be a very utopian sort of project.
Well, perhaps Snow’s “two cultures” aren’t necessarily so different after al, for as it is nicely put on Wikipedia,
Abreu has dedicated himself to a utopian dream in which an orchestra represents the ideal society, and the sooner a child is nurtured in that environment, the better for all.
There have been two documentaries made about El Sistema, and if you’re in Seoul, you can see the latter — unfortunately with Korean subtitles only, and it’s in Spanish, but you know, I suspect you’ll understand most of it with minimal Korean or Spanish. I knew a little about the project before, and had only a few bits explained to me during, but I was still blown away by the film and very inspired.
The documentary is very much worth the while, if you’re able to get to the Dongsung Art Center in Hyehwa at one of the times it’s scheduled. So to that end, the info I posted on my other website (where I have stuff for my students):
The film is showing at Hypertheque Nada, which is part of the Dongsung Art Center (동숭 아트 센터). There are schedules for Sept. 16-22, and Sept. 23-29.
Here’s a map, and I think this is the location on Google Maps.
However, I think the easiest map to use is on this map to the nearby Robot Museum: it shows the location of the Dongsung Art Center, the subway exit (#1) and the road much more clearly. Just remember to go to the Dongsung Art Center, not the Robot Museum! (Or, go to both!)
Warning: the cinema is pretty close to the subway station, but if you’re more than 10 minutes late for the film, then they won’t let you in, so don’t be late!
Also: there are no drinks or snacks in the theater–it’s one of those artsy repertory cinema places–and the café in front of the cinema is quite expensive, so make sure you have either eaten before or have something in your bag to sneak in.
For those of you living outside Seoul or Korea, the film is out on DVD and I recommend it very highly. Also, an earlier documentary called Tocar y Luchar has been made and apparently is viewable online at Google Videos for free (though I’ve not seen that yet, and it, too, is lacking in subtitles.)
Here’s a trailer for El Sistema:
On a pedagogical note, I saw a number of interesting things that formed part of the musical education in El Sistema, and which I think ought to be part of music education — and education generally. I’ll note one here: when a kid received music lessons, he or she didn’t do so alone. Each lesson involved at least a trio: a student, a teacher, and another student (perhaps junior to the one getting the lesson, but I’m not sure). This is a pretty mind-blowing approach to me, since it means kids would learn about techniques and practices — would be aware of them — long before being called on to master them themselves. I bet that’s like rocket fuel for the younger kids’ musical development.
Likewise, I noticed that a number of the instructors were at the lessons with instrument in hands, such as the trumpeter who paused a student when he had a passage wrong, and played it correctly for him. What a difference that would have made for me — to have a saxophone instructor who took seriously the process of imparting the skills of performing.
I half-remember some of the people I took lessons from in high school did this, including the pianist I took jazz theory lessons with, but during all of my three years of saxophone lessons in university, I think I had the experience once where one of the two instructors I had actually had his own saxophone and played something for me in an exemplary fashion. It’s like having an English teacher who refuses to teach English. Which, here in Korea, we all know doesn’t really work all that well… even the English teachers who never speak English.
Anyway — while I can’t speak for Tocar y Luchar, not having seen it yet, El Sistema is absolutely wonderful and inspiring, not just in the awwwwww, how nice sense but in the sense that something you really don’t expect could help fix a hell of a mess somehow sometimes can. Music lessons–and, I’d argue, other artistic, creative, collective endeavours–can save lives and uplift a significant part of a society most in need of help, for example.
Utopianism deserves a better rap, if you ask me.
Well….
Since I didn’t see the movie, I can’t offer this as a straight counter-example to that case, but…
My daughter(third grade)’s elementary school basically forces their students to learn a string instrument up to fourth grade, and a woodwind / horn instrument up to sixth grade to give them a “full” education.
My wife, fearing that my daughter will “fall behind” (i.e. play worse than other students and lose her self-esteem) got her a private violin teacher to teach her violin on top of what she is learning from school. (That is in addition to extra classes that she has to go to for English, math, art, swimming and science).
As a result, she hates the violin (though luckily, she seems to still like music – her tastes run to the Beatles (yeah!) and the Girls Generation (sh*t), and had a disastrous relationship with her teacher – basically disliking her, and treating her badly. (I met the violin teacher a few times, and she seemed nice enough to me, though the teacher did rip into my daughter when it was obvious she didn’t practice). My daughter also did get a silver prize in a class competition, though).
Why does it seem like Koreans a lot of times, take what is good, take the meat (and the fun) out of it, leave the shell, and seem to feel so damned proud about it?
Junsok,
Yeah, if you saw the film you’d see the difference in approach, I think. Not to critique your daughter’s program personally, but my belief (about which I am now writing essays for a book) is that all those extra classes in art, music, math, science, English, etc. (and the pressure not to fall behind) are screwing up kids and have been for a while here. So many seem to arrive at uni with a blank hole where their identity was supposed to have developed, along with their idiosyncratic interests, political inclinations, imagination, and creativity.
By the way, I took music lessons, but when I wasn’t interested, those stopped for a while. (They only restarted when I found a subject I really wanted to study — jazz theory — and a teacher who could stimulate my interest.) And I had an atrocious relationship with my own high school band teacher, who was a raging little fascist and who seemed to have problems with all the kids who were actually good at their instruments.
(He was extra-tough on my sister, a bassoonist like he’s once been. As far as I remember, he gave her a B in her band course, and my father protested the grade, asking how it was that she was good enough to play for the local municipal orchestra — against some serious competition including a bassoonist in the Dept. of Music at Uni, as well as less serious competition like the teacher himself — yet he deemed her only a B or B+ or whatever it was she got in the class. And my dad was right: I resented her insane natural talent but it was undeniable.)
Personal experience suggests music teachers can be a REAL pain in the ass, since those who cannot do, teach, but many of those who have to teach instead of doing in the performing arts tend to get bitter and messed-up, even if they are good at seeming normal at staff meetings and parent-teacher interviews.
And as for this:
You tell me, man. But I’m certainly not denying that this is my impression too. The best I can tell is that the majority of people cannot tell there was ever meat/fun there, and the few who do either flee the country, or are silenced by the pressures of living in a meatless/funless society.
Hence one thing I recommended in an interview, when rambling about interesting young people here in SF: I argued that when holding cons or group events, no speech should be longer than one minute.
(The propensity for ignorant dolts in suits to take over and turn potentially fun events into tortuous series of boring speeches robs just about every public event of its energy, verve, and fun here, in my experience. Indie-rock concerts seem to be the exception, but even there the musicians seem to love the sound of their speaking voices almost more than the sound of their singing voices. Sigh.)
My real thinking is that an important part of the solution is immolation of the hakwon industry. ie. BURN DOWN THE HAKWONS, the title of the book I propose to write.
Feels good to say it: Burn Down the Hakwons!
I feel your pain.
However, (perhaps because I have friends who run Hagwons, and who knows? The way the Univ is going, I may need to change jobs real soon…) I tend to think it’s the fault of Korean psycho-Moms. If the hagwons go away, they will think of something else.
(Now if we can find a way to channel all that psycho-energy into something that is actually useful …) (and I mean PSYCHO – not psychic).
Concerning why Koreans are not “fun”.
I may have been in the West for too long, but I am always struck by the way the Korean/Japanese/Chinese intellectuals portray themselves as martyrs – they undergo profound suffering and pain to pursue intellectual endeavors. I’ve never met a native East Asian scholar who admit they do intellectual work because it is fun. (Is it any wonder there’s almost no native East Asian Nobel Prize winners in the sciences – the Nobel Science winners all mention that science is profoundly interesting and “fun”.)
I wonder why the Korean intellectuals always have to insist that intellectual work (or anything useful and worthwhile, for that matter) must be drudgingly painful, hard and no fun? Could it be that all Koreans are closet Catholics or closet Christian Fundamentalists or closet French? (I remember an English woman remarking that there is no French word for ‘fun.’ Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I see parallels between Koreans and the French so much).
Oh well, I’ve been telling the nanny for my kids that we are raising a generation of psychotics and in twenty years, the (current) kids will rise up, and kill all the old folks (people of my generation). Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them one bit.
Junsok,
Well, yes, the Psycho Moms do need some help with their issues. But I see the Hakwons as a kind of parasitic infestation, and while I agree the Moms’ issues are crucial, until the Hakwon infection is eradicated, the Moms won’t be ready to get their treatment.
And as for your observation on the way Northeast Asian intellectuals frame their work, wow — I just saw a a talk the other day (on TED.com) regarding a similar cultural problem in the Western construction of “creativity” as painful, madness-related, suffering-involving, and so on. The person giving the talk, Elizabeth Gilbert, argues that we need a new model of creativity — or, at least, to look at alternate models. I’m not sure how useful her resuscitation of the “muses” model is, but the talk, at least, seems to suggest a fascinating parallel to what you describe:
As for the next generation rising up and killing their elders: yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s important to remember that fate can be averted, if enough people stop and say, wait a minute, we don’t have to torture our kids that way. Or, for example, launch programs that push things in a healthier direction.
The problem is, I kind of doubt enough people will do so. And I feel you on the needing to find other work — but for me, I think the end of this job will also mean the end of my stay in Korea. I kind of hit my limit today in terms of unnecessary, intolerable crap that I was expected to just put up with, and sort of sat up and said, “I think I’m done.” We’ll see… but yeah, that’s the sense I get.
Gord,
Happy Chuseok to you too. Thanks for the text message.
Hm. El Sistema. Sounds intriguing. I’ll see if I can get ahold of it. I’ll also look for Tocar y Luchar on google…
As for rising up and killing the next generation, I think there was a song about that. Something like this:
The killer awoke at dawn,
he put his boots on…
Ha, ha, it’s The Doors, get it?
Well, my theory concurs with Junseok Yang’s theory that it is probably the parents not the hagwons to blame in the sense that hagwons just supply what parents demand.
In my case, I’m furious at my daughter because she refused to talk on the phone this morning with her American grandparents because “I don’t know Miguk mal.”
Now that she has humilitated me before my elders, I’m thinking of all sorts of ways to torture her.
How about this? No more videos unless you study English for one hour every evening with ME.
That’ll bring her damn “miguk mal” up to speed.
But reason tells me that this contest of wills won’t work.
So I briefly entertain the notion of exiling her to hagwon hell for the remainder of the time she spends under my purview (something like 14 more years remain).
I guess that a nagging voice tells me that it is my own distorted ego pushing me to think that she needs lessons in English or in anything else for that matter.
Parents think their kids shortcomings reflect badly on the parents.
Anybody who convinces a parent that the shortcomings can be fixed has an instant market.
It doesn’t matter how bad it is for the kid. It could be electroshock therapy or a lobotomy. If you convince me you will rectify the kid’s flaws, I’ll sign her up.
And that’s the same in any country. Koreans are not the only ones with that particular behavior pattern.
The difference is that Koreans usually emphasize scholastics or music training. In the U.S., in contrast, it’s often about sports. Especially dads who pressure their sons or daughters to play some particular sport as a matter of heritage or family pride…
Yeeech. Parents SUCK. I know because I am one.
Personally I’ve been scheming to force my kids to start a model rocket club when they get old enough but as near as I can tell, it’s illegal to sell the stupid Estes rocket engines in Korea…
Bradley,
El Sistema’s available in DVD format if you are up for ordering it. I am guessing a trip up to Seoul isn’t possible, though, so the cinema version you won’t be able to see.
I don’t know the Doors song, or get the in-joke (if there is one I’m missing).
Your daughter doesn’t speak to you in English? Huh… well, I am not a parent and don’t know the details but I’ll be honest, it seems to me you might get more English into her head by not destroying your relationship with her by exiling her to hakwon hell. I’ve seen a number of parents here include one or more native speakers of English, but whose kids don’t speak English in addition to Korean. I always shake my head in disbelief. I only know one case where the native Anglophone parent spends time with the kids daily, doing English-language stuff.
Then again, maybe it’s a social thing? My mother also spoke to me only in English for my whole life, despite the fact French is her mother tongue. And I wasn’t eager to speak in French with her… but I get the sense that she also gave up pretty quickly due to my resistance.
Anyway, if the problem is parents, not hakwons, what is to be done? It seems to me that either way, one cannot really “fix” parents on a mass scale, but one can make changes in the system, cultivating positive experiences that reconfigure how the next generation will raise their kids.
By the way, you’re right that Korean parents aren’t the only ones to push their kids to extremes… but I get the feeling the pushing is more extreme here. Most North American kids I knew weren’t under the kind of pressures — athletic, academic, social, or otherwise — that Korean kids seem to face. I mean, we have little league, but we don’t have a little league industry bussing kids from sport to sport till midnight brings them home, exhausted.
Model rockets! I did that for about a year. It was fun, if a bit fiddly. (And my rockets always got destroyed on the first flight, which discouraged me from building them too carefully.) How are Estes rocket engines illegal in Korea? Shops all over the place sell fireworks to kids unsupervised!
(Or is it just an import barrier?)
One data point does not make a trend, or is statistically valid, but it does make a good case study. When Chun Doo Hwan came to power (and when I was in 10th grade – around 1981), the government banned all hagwons and private tutoring. They also promised to make the entrance exams easier. (I have no way of knowing whether this rumor is true or not, but people were saying that it was because Chun’s son was not that bright, and he was due to take the college entrance exam.) One rather scary result of that policy was that the government told the high schools to select about 20 students in every class (the classes back then were about 60 students per class) and have them spy on their classmates and friends to report them if they went to hagwons or had tutors in secret.
Around 1985, they gave up the whole thing. At least publicly, the reason for cancelling was that too many students were going to illegal secret hagwons, and shouldn’t the students have the “freedom to learn”?
And in my opinion, at least, the mothers back then were nowhere as near psycho as they are now. They would probably start a revolution now if the government banned hagwons.
Junsok,
Yeah, now that you mention it, I also remember reading that Park (and maybe also Chun) also constantly tried to cap enrollment in universities (thinking too many people were enrolling in humanities programs that weren’t useful for economic/industrial development), and to crack down on the way people were gaming the housing/school district laws. (By, say, renting closet-sized apartments in Gangnam, or having kids live with relatives in a better area, so that they could enroll kids in schools there.)
(And my source for those was Michael Seth’s Education Fever, a phrase that comes up in your comment too.)
You’re right that it’s an interesting case study, though I can’t help but wonder how much of all of this comes down to the University Entrance Exam system. Not that it’d be easy to get professors grading on a sensible scale, but if half-assed, don’t-belong-in-a-university type students were to become June grads (as they became December grads where I did my BA) maybe the pressure to get in wouldn’t be so high… because there’d always be room made by people who seemed like good candidates, but actually sucked.
But I can’t help but suspect the mothers would still be crazy. It’s quite sad: we actually had the TV on the other day (rare occurrence) and saw a Korean-made documentary about education systems around the world. IT was striking how drab and functional the Korean classrooms were in comparison, but also how stiff and demotivated the Korean kids seemed in comparison to the American and Danish ones (in the bits I saw; I was cooking).
One rather scary result of that policy was that the government told the high schools to select about 20 students in every class (the classes back then were about 60 students per class) and have them spy on their classmates and friends to report them if they went to hagwons or had tutors in secret.
Yeah, that’s no kind of solution to anything. In fact, it’s a way of screwing up a society, I think.
One idea I’ve thought about is changing the laws on hakwons and stuff: not banning them, but regulating them more stiffly. For example, simply upping the requirements for people they can legally hire, and cracking down hard on the hakwons that illegally hire those that don’t meet the criteria.
This would raise the costs of hakwon study to the point where fewer people could afford it, and drive a number of hakwons out of business. Then… deregulate private teaching and make it legal for anyone, Korean or otherwise, who can get an English teaching license. All of this would (a) make parents much less likely to imposed huge amounts of schooling on their kids, and (b) free up more of those kids time, while (c) not compelling a complete shutdown of TEFL, though (d) forcing it out of the classroom, to contexts where more efficient learning is possible anyway.
On top of which, I’ll be honest: one thing those crazy moms don’t get is this: the most powerful way to improve someone’s English to the levels most people want to achieve is to give ’em a year or two abroad. I’ve had plenty of Uni students who were unable to speak more than a few words, who’ve returned after a year abroad talking up a storm. All those hours and hours in the hakwons may not quite be wasted, but they’re certainly overkill for the kind of basis one would need to set for foundation for that year-abroad-bootstrap. (And a Working Holiday Visa year abroad, or a year as a real exchange student in proper academic classes conducted in English, kicks ass on a year abroad in a hakwon somewhere.)
And in my opinion, at least, the mothers back then were nowhere as near psycho as they are now. They would probably start a revolution now if the government banned hagwons.
Which brings me again to: what is to be done? By the way, the book I intend to write is kind of aimed at pointing out that the approach the mothers are taking is likelier to harm the child, cripple the child’s education, and make them less successful, productive human beings in the long run. Not that they’re likely to take my word for it, but I imagine the argument might be interesting. (And I think the people who actually went through the hell of the hakwon/public ed system more recently might be open to the criticisms. We’ll see, I guess.)
One (serious) hypothesis I’ve developed over the last few years is that the economic incentive for this screwed up education system comes from Korea’s labor market – namely a dual market where there is a protected high paying sector (government, chaebols, professors) where you get above-market wages and (until about 1998) where you were guaranteed a job for life. In the US or Canada, they would hire you for five years or so, and if you worked out, they would send you on the permanent worker track. However, in Korea, due to legal and cultural reasons, even if you were not suited for the job, it would be almost impossible to fire you once they’ve hired you. As a result, almost everyone tries to shoot for this protected higher-paying sector; (otherwise you would be stuck in a lower-paying small or medium size company where the labor turnarounds and insecurities tend to be much higher, and you would receive market wages).
Well, if you were in charge of hiring at these higher-wage companies, how would you hire new employees? Since the decision is bound to be controversial, and you don’t have the luxury of trying out these new workers for a few months or years, yo try to go with whatever (imperfect) indicator you may have. As long as test scores and the college you came from reflect (partially) your underlying abilities, using these indicators may be your best option (both privately and socially. Joseph Stiglitz won a Nobel Prize in economics for this “screening” approach; and Michael Spence won it for the “signalling” – namely getting a degree to signal that you have superior underlying talent. Their ideas were appropriated by evolutionary biologists, including Jared Diamond).
This hypotheses would explain rationally why there are so many SKY students are at these companies (without resorting to the explanation of “the old boys network”), and would explain why the students and companies are so gung ho about test scores.
One of the consequences of this hypothesis (if true) is that no matter what reform they tried for education, it would not work without reform in the labor market.
I’ve been trying to find a way to test this hypothses on and off for about four years now. and make a paper out of it, but I can’t come up with a good statistical test with data available.
One way of changing the labor market to ease the pressure in the education market would be to allow what they’ve tried in UK and Ireland, namely make it easier to fire workers in their first 2-5 years on the job. Interestingly, while UK and Ireland accepted that concession fairly easily (and that has always been the way in the US), when France tried to install such a rule, the young people and the labor unions revolted, and they had one of the most violent demonstrations ever in Paris (this was about 3 years ago, I think).
But since the chaebols are realizing that test scores are becoming less correlated with job performance, they seem to be trying new things, so in a generation or two, the pressure on education may ease up.
Until then, of course, there is the structural problem that I’ve written about, coupled with Psycho-Moms.
(Two examples: a conversation overheard between two youngish mothers of my acquaintance…: “I wish the schools would let the kids go earlier. They hardly have any time to study…” “Yes, I know. They barely have time to go to all the hagwons…); (and a story quoted in Marmot’s Hole – The World Bank is seeking young Koreans. They are getting a lot of enquiries – not from potential applicants, but from their mothers. I know a few people who work in the World Bank (and I don’t mean the cushy jobs they save for government bureaucrats on detached assignments…) and such phone calls do not bode well for these potential applicants),
What’s my solution?
I;m sorry to say I don’t see one in the short term. The only way to fix it is for the system to break down so much that everyone has no choice but to agree that things must be fixed. That means any attempt to try to fix the system partially now will do more harm than good in the long run. I’m not sure if anyone can win against these psycho-moms, and any attempt to do so would just result in high blood pressure, and being a forgotten martyr to the cause.
You’re talking about mothers (well, some of them anyway) who gladly cut off tips of their kid’s tongues because they thought it would make them better English speakers. (How would they explain perfect English spoken by 2nd generation Korean-Americans, I wonder)
(And if you did not know this by now, yes I am a cynic).
Oh, and concerning your proposal about running up the prices of hagwons.
As I said, a couple of my friends run hagwons, and the government enforces price ceilings, under the principle that “learning should be afforadable for everybody.” So the psycho-moms would be the first to campaign against deregulation.
However, according to some news stories, no hagwon can do everything the government forces and recommends hagwons to do (e.g. teacher: student ratio, degrees for teachers, etc.) and still maintain that price.
But the crazy Korean education has not been entirely a failure. We have the best English test takers in the world. It’s just that they can’t do anything with English other than taking tests.
Junsok,
Maybe greater autonomy in career choice is what will make the difference? I have to say, I see a link between this education mania, the observation you made the other day (about how NE Asian academics seem to always equate their work to drudgery and suffering), and one more point — the “just bear it” meme that seems so common here.
I have a lot of students or former students who contact me when they’re agonizing over a decision. They come to me with, “I don’t know what to do, and everyone is telling me to do X.” The obvious thing is, if they’re contacting me, if they’re agonizing, they really don’t want to do X, but would rather do Y or Z. But everyone around them — parents, friends, random relatives they never talk to who suddenly turn up with advice — seem to tell them that it is imperative they do X, and stick with it no matter how absolutely fucking miserable it makes them, for the most spurious of reasons — “It will give you good job experience” or “You would be wasting your time if you just did what you wanted” or “You’re getting too old and will be a spinster soon” (at age 25).
And the weird thing is, it’s always, always advice to do the opposite of what they want, deep down, to do. The ones who want to stay in Korea, get pressured to go abroad. The ones who want to study abroad are pressured to stay. The ones who want to study more are pressured to get a job. The ones who want to work are pressured to study more. And I’ve known a couple of young women who were among my best and brightest students, whose mothers thought they should just go to technical high school and get a job, because their fathers/husbands/brothers would support them anyway someday.
Seriously, the pattern seems to be (a) never follow your instincts and aspirations, and (b) always do whatever makes you miserable and cuts short your potential in life. It’s heartbreaking, too, because many people decide to do with the soul-destroying option. I remember vividly someone saying, “You’re the first person to ask me that! Why didn’t I call you sooner?” after I said, “What do you WANT to do?”
Maybe it all locks together.
Would you be able to get data on career selections by demographics among Korean-Americans or Korean-Australians or something? That might show something about the labour/education thing.
Oh, the reason I mentioned autonomy is because (a) I’d imagine Koreans raised in a Western country (and staying there) would, at least these days, have a certain degree more autonomy than in Korean society — their peers are more encouraged to behave that way (doing what they want, not what their moms expect them to do) and I imagine it rubs off some. (My Chinese Canadian friends tended to be this way, at least, and they spoke of it in exactly the way I’d expect from people who were bicultural, aware of the significance of parental expectations in their parents’ culture, but also committed to living like a Canadian and making their own choices. Of course, I was a Lit/Music major, so I was meeting the ones who fought for the right to study that stuff…)
I mention this because I’ve noticed more and more of my students seem not to be so interested in working for the big chaebol corporations. Even the ones who graduate and start out there quit after a year or two, saying it’s just too stressful and tiring. (I’ve gotten a few emails like that.) It’s hardly a sample, but I betcha you could probably gather data from university students, online, on the desirability of chaebol corp jobs, the relevance of parental expectations/advice on career decisions, and so on.
I just want to check: are you saying that “old boy’s network” has a negligible role in applicant filtering? Because I remember noticing that one of the places Miss Jiwaku applied not long ago — for a short-term job, because that’s all she could really stand for a big Korean company — asked where the parents and siblings were working.
Funnily enough, it seems to me that one would do better selecting for people who didn’t go to SKY universities — who are therefore not possessed of some sense of their own entitlement — and who did okay, but not outstandingly on their exams — as it suggests they’ll be grateful for the jobs and work harder for longer. Of course, I have a dim view of SKY universities, for a number of reasons. (Not the least being an interview I had at one, which was so pathetically snobby on the part of the faculty that I wouldn’t have taken the job if offered, and a story about a SKY engineering department head who was such a moron he thought that on human beings, the fingerprints on each finger were the same… he was leading the team coding software for a fingerprint recognition system. The software assumed that all fingers on a hand would have the same fingerprint. The Prof was baffled when the client (my friend) complained. I guess he never looked at his own hands or something.) Anecdotal it is, but it leaves me with a dim view nonetheless.
It seems to me another way would be to have people demonstrate some ability in the area before being hired on full-time. Daniel Pink wrote somewhere about a graphic design company that was looking for interns, and asked them to submit something like a one-page document that demonstrated the applicant’s design skills. It was like, wow, testing the abilities relevant to the job (along, of course, with a CV, an interview, and so on). Hopefully the chaebols will catch on to this. And maybe the Psycho Moms will have to chill out too. If Daniel Pink’s right and the next few decades will demand a workforce equipped with different skills–“inventiveness, empathy, meaning”–then the Psycho Moms might learn to let the kids develop an identity and imagination… or maybe they’ll start forcing their kids to “art” hakwon and “creativity” hakwon.
Those examples: ah, yes. I’ve overheard a few conversations like that too, and had others recounted to me. One of the things Korean youths in Indonesia seemed to be happy about was… no hakwons, and sane hours of schooling.
Ha, moms calling the World Bank on their kids behalf? What’s embarrassing to me is that the moms simply don’t get how unhelpful that would be.
Owch. But the system isn’t really likely to break so catastrophically that that everyone will be on board for a fix, right? I mean, that would take a lot.
Well, it may be true, but I’m not sure I’m willing to believe it. Not quite. But I will say a lot of my Korean friends and acquaintances seem to agree. They have said things like they won’t have children, refuse to have kids in Korea, will never send their kids to Korean schools.
I have to imagine that at least some mothers could have their consciousness raised–not by me, necessarily, but by someone or several someones–who are speaking from a position they can recognize and respect.
The explanation a few gyopos have told me they’d heard from mothers when confronted with this was: (a) how do I know you speak English normally? I can’t speak English, so I can’t tell, and (b) you grew up speaking English so your tongue is longer.
(And I thought the surgery was supposed to lengthen the tongue? The short film I saw simulating (?) that surgery involved cuts (and stitches) on the sides of the tongue, as well as severing the frenulum under the tongue (on the theory that it inhibits movement).)
And that video was horrifying. Horrifying, to the point where I was ready to punch in the face any “doctor” offering such surgery. Actually, such doctors ought to have their medical licenses revoked.
I can’t quite allow myself to be one, though it is my natural tendency.
I know about the price ceilings: I think they’re bad because they also act as quality ceilings. (Unless one expects hakwons to run as nonprofit organizations, and they could, but I doubt anyone would bother starting one.)
As for the Psycho-Moms, maybe the meme that needs to circulate is one of shame. If the message was hammered at enough, say by the media, that overschooling a kid is a form of awful, inexcusable child abuse, maybe the Psycho-Moms would feel ashamed and would let their kids have more time to themselves.
Well, unless you reduce profits. (Because they’re also not paying enough to attract people with any teaching experience at all, for example.) But then, if they’re institutions founded to further the education of people, they don’t need massive profits. Ha, ha, ha.
Hey, wait, I have the solution! All we need is to find some way of building an English-test-taking based economy. :)
It’s interesting that the students go to you to talk about their problems. I think that speaks well of how you are connecting with the students. (During my time in the University since 2003, I think I only came across three students who came with serious career choice problems. Of course there were several dozen who came with questions and asked for advice, but not serious life changing advice.) I don’t know whether that is because the students feel I am aloof, not worth consulting, or Korean. (I must say I am somewhat relieved, though.)
Since this entry has “fallen below the fold,” I am not sure if it is worth continuing, but to hit on some of the points you made:
1) On giving children advice which goes against what they want: I think there are two related problems. Because of the (short) Korean development history, and perhaps because of the war, Koreans of my generation and above place large emphasis on stability and financial / material well-being. (386/486 politicians excepted). Thus, parents (though I suspect this is the same elsewhere) place abnormal emphasis on “good job.” Also, for people older than my generation, they have been through Japanese colonialization, Korean war, poverty and then rapid growth, so for them, stoicism (“just bear it – no grinning required”) comes naturally, and (perhaps due to Confuscianism), held in high esteem. Ergo, things are slow and steady, but no rapid structural breaks. Korean tradition of not just looking at the current generation but scores of ancestors are probably also not helping (what would your great-great grandfather, the ex-advisor to the King say?) but I think that is becoming less important every year. There may also be a “selection bias.” If the parents insisted on things that the student at least partially agree with, they wouldn’t come to you for advice.
With the next generation (those who are just born) there may be hope of a more wider career choice becoming popular, but I think this generation will not be able to go beyond the cultural and economic forces “forcing” them to get “good” jobs. But some of the press coverage on alternate jobs, as well as the increasing number of people who refuse to work punishing schedules has me hopeful. (However, the way the administrators and the professors are acting lately on the latest academic fashion and trends in our university make me doubt that academic and intellectual communities will be of much help).
2) Do I mean old school network does not matter? Obviously not. However, one of methods of attack for economic analysis is to take a seemingly strange trend (e.g. concentration of SKY students) and see whether this is a socially optimal result (i.e there is a rational reason why this strange thing happens) or whether the only explanation may be corruption or private optimization. If latter, then all means should be used to change the system; but if the former, you run the risk of increasing chaos, in which case you would need to carefully design an alternative policy first. I think the concentration of SKY students is a mixture of both, but with some more weight toward the “socially rational” side (though as I mentioned, because the labor market is becoming more flexible – i.e. it is getting easier to fire incompetents, its weight may be dropping).
3) Alternative means of hiring – I don’t know if you were in Korea in the late 1990s, but that’s where the ideas of “interns” came from. It’s had mixed results. I don’t know the exact figures, but having an intern system has increased the chances for non SKY students to get hired – but the hires at the top firms still are weighted toward SKY universities and the almost-equivalents, which I think tend to support my hypothesis.
4) Data problems – some of the data you mentioned are not available (e.g. 2nd and 3rd generation foreign born Korean employment data) are not available. If I wanted to pursue this data, I would probably have to give up a lot of time and lose income with little possiblity of publication; and given the way my wife goes through money, it’s not an option until (at least) I get my tenure. Some data that you’d think the University would have, they do not. For example, for bureaucratic BS, I needed to find current employment data for recent (past 5 years) graduates. The university only tracks employment for the most recent year’s graduates (which seems somewhat idiotic, since this applies the students get jobs as soon as they graduate – which is no longer true; but apparently, most Korean university rankings only count the most recent graduates’ employment rates, so the university sees no reason to track employment over medium term of 2-5 years, let alone the long term). (Though to be fair, neither of the US universities that I have attended formally asked whether I am working or not, and where, so the US universities do not keep track of employment).
5) Future types of jobs – I think Pink’s argument applies for US-EU, where they need to develop creative industries and service indutries to survive. If Korea were smart, we would follow this path as well, but we are simply not ready. Our leaders (while they may talk the talk) are not ready. (Which may be why Korea is desperate to hold on to manufacturing as the base of its economy. For manufacturing, having zombie employees may not be that bad).
6) On “Art” and “Creativity” hagwon – Yep, my daughter goes to the former, and will probably to latter in a few years. (Though in fairness, she says she enjoys the art hagwon greatly). One argument that I had with her mother on whether to continue her violin lessons – she said violin will help her creativity and make her more well-rounded. I argued how would she get those things when she hates doing it.
7) On SKY students and a sense of entitlement – I am continually surprised at how too many graduates of SKY, epecially those who came from “good” majors (e.g. law, business, economics) seem to think the world owes them a living and/or people should listen to them because they came from these universities. (SNU law seems to be the worst – they have a double disadvantage of being graduates of SNU and learning law). I’ve attended, frankly, better universities (at least globally), and I’ve never seen that kind of arrogance outside Harvard. (However, I must also say that when I was pursuing my Ph.D, some SNU graduates used that arrogance to get through their dissertation, so there is some slight positive side of that).
8) Psycho-Moms: Since you were here long enough, you should know that the only shame these ajummas and psycho-moms feel is that they are falling behind the Joneses (especially the kids). I have another theory (half joking) that the reason Korean men are alcoholics and they have to fool around so much is that they have to go back home to these psycho-moms.