Saya tiba-tiba ingin mengetahui kehidupan sekolah anak-anak Korea. Saya cari di Google dan menemukan dua blog ini. Saya salin tempel tanpa edit tulisan mereka. Tujuannya sih untuk memudahkan saya kalau saya mau membaca artikel ini lagi. So, here they are...
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1. Kindergarten is not mandatory, therefore if a student goes to one they are private schools
2. Kindergarten is for kids aged 5-7
3. Elementary school students go to school for only about 5 hours a day
4.
Although elementary school doesn’t have long hours, a high number of
students go to “academies” after school (like the one I teach at). There
are Math, English, Science academies, but if a student goes to piano
lessons daily they call that an academy as well.
5.
Some parents (like my principal) send their kids to a number of
“academies.” My prinicipal’s son goes to SEVEN: English, Math, Science,
Essay Writing, Piano, ‘All Subjects,’ and Chinese Calligraphy. The total
cost for this is $1,700 per month. His hours are generally 7:30am-10pm
and on Saturdays he has about 5 hours worth of school. I’m not kidding.
What a tough life.
6. English is required to be taught in elementary schools from the age of 10
7. It’s not out of the ordinary for students to be physically punished if they act up or don’t do homework.
8.
Students go to their public schools on the weekends too. However, they
only have it on Saturdays every other week, and it’s only half of a day.
9. The majority of middle schools (for students age 13-15) have strict uniform and hair cutting policies
10. Elementary schools have about 30 kids in each class
11. Middle schools have about 40 kids in each class. That’s a lot of students.
12. The students do not go from class to class, they stay in the same class in their seats and the teachers switch rooms
13.
There’s a breast pocket on the middle school students’ uniforms where
they put a flap which has their name on it. Yes, there are basically
nametags for each student in school. (“NAME TAGS JERRY!”)
14. The school year begins in March, not September like we’re used to in the U.S.
15.
Since school is year round, they don’t have a big break before they
enter their new grade, but they do have a summer, winter and spring
break. Spring vacation happens about 3-4 weeks after Winter vacation
ends which is weird.
16. A standard day for elementary school kids is about 5 hours long
17. A standard day for middle school kids is about 8 hours long
18. A standard day for the majority of High Schools is about 12 hours. Sometimes longer. I’m not kidding.
19. In Middle School and High School, the students often take a high number of classes, up to 11 subjects.
20.
As if High School wasn’t demanding enough, the Korean version of the
SATs is apparently one of the most difficult standardized tests in the
world. Here’s a bunch of facts on that test alone…
a. Some parents make their kids start studying for it before they even get to middle school.
b. The test takes place on the same day every year, the second Thursday of November
c. All students take the exam the same day
d. The exam lasts about 9 and a half hours. No kidding.
e. Because everyone of the same age is doing the same thing at the
same time on the same day. Traffic problems occur which lead to
i. Extra buses/trains running during those hours before/after the exam
ii. Workers allowed to show up an hour later to limit traffic
f. Having a quiet and peaceful atmosphere is essential as well, which leads to
i. A ban on honking horns near schools
ii. Flight schedules are changed
iii. Protests of any kind should not happen
g.Students get treated like GODS on this day
i. Parents will usually bring their kids to school, and
there will be loads of people outside CHEERING kids on as they enter the
school. “COME ON BEN, ACE THAT EXAM!!!”
ii. Underclassmen and past graduates might show up as well to show support.
iii.
People will be handing out candy, tea, coffee, etc. to people as they
walk in, to give them a little energy before the stressful day starts
iv. Taxi’s might give students free taxi rides
h. The test isn’t the be all and end all of your success, but if you
get into a top University, you’re on cruise control from there on out.
Just like they can be obsessed with personal appearance, the name of the
school on your diploma carries a lot of weight from what I’ve read,
more so than it does back in the US.
Although
I’m envious that many of my students speak pretty good English AND can
play an instrument or two, I’m certainly put off a little bit by what it
takes for them to get there.
What does all this stress lead to? Well, here’s a direct quote from a website I found…
“Suicide
and the CSAT - Because everything rides on this one exam, this one day,
it is not surprising that there are suicides before and after the test,
or when the results are published. Some students, convinced they will
not do well, chose to die rather than take the exam. Although the
highest number of suicides use to happen in December, these days they
happen earlier since the answers are posted on-line hours after the test
is over.”
Yikes.
Written by Ben Gwynne at http://iliveinkorea.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-facts-about-korean-schools.html
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Korean High School Life as Seen by Elaine
As I am coming to the end of my 3rd semester
teaching in Korea, I have decided it is time to reflect and report on what it’s
like to teach here. I teach at the
all-girls high school in Jecheon, a small city of about 120,000 people that is located
2 hours south of Seoul. My school is the
only all-girls high school in the city and it is where girls from Jecheon, and
its surrounding towns and villages, hope to attend if they want to go to
university.
Like most of the school systems back home, the Korean school
system is divided into three levels: elementary, middle and high school. Elementary lasts for six years while middle
and high school last for three years each.
Grade levels here are different, however, in that they start back at grade
1 in each school level. So, students are
1st graders three times. As
you are reading, when I mention 1st, 2nd, or 3rd
grade, you can equate these to 10th, 11th and 12th
grade in the USA.
About 1,000 girls attend Jecheon Girls High School. Each grade is divided into 10 classes with
about 35 students in each class. The
official school day is 9:00 am-6:00 pm, however, all students arrive for the
8:00 am ‘zero’ period and most students stay after dinner to attend classes and
study until 10:00 pm, when the school building closes. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served in the
school cafeteria and most students stay for lunch and dinner.
 |
Jecheon Girls High School
(Picture taken last January) |
Since my school is the most prestigious for girls in
Jecheon, it has a dormitory on campus where about 200 students live during the
week. Most of the students who stay in
the dorm live outside of the city (maybe 30-40 minutes away) but others live
nearby (maybe 5 minutes). Dormitory
rules mandate that dorm students stay awake studying in study rooms until
11:30 pm. If they are caught sleeping,
they are written up; an accumulation of write-ups gets you kicked out of the
dorm. Students are woken up by a
speaker system at 6:30 every morning and go to breakfast at 7:00.
When the school building closes at 10:00 pm, many of the
students who do not stay in the dormitory head to a doksoshil to study for a
few more hours. Doksoshils are rented study
rooms. One large room is separated into
8-12 cubicles that are rented out monthly to middle and high school students as
well as university students and adults that need a place to work or study. Students will stay until 1:00 or 2:00 am on
weeknights and return on weekends for half or full days of studying (depending
on how close exams are).
Some students do not stay at school after 6:00 pm; however, it’s
not because they are going home to relax and hang out with their family. No, they are heading to after school
academies called hagwons. In elementary
and middle school, students might attend hagwons for art, music, sport, or
traditional school subjects like math, English and Korean. But, by the time students reach high school, they
only seem to attend math, English or Korean hagwons. These students are popping around to
different hagwons until 10:00 pm (on days they don’t have hagwon, they remain at
school with everyone else until 10:00 pm). Most students also attend hagwons on Saturday
and Sunday, usually from 9:00 am-12:00 or 1:00 pm.
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Studying during the week before finals.
When I tell them good luck, they just groan. |
All of my students report an average of 4-5 hours of sleep a
night. Some get a chance to play
catch-up (but can they really catch up on all that lack of sleep?) on Saturday
and Sunday afternoons.
At the end of
each semester, students take final exams. During the 3-4 weeks
preceding finals,
students start studying even more intensely.
How do you get more intense than the usual 16 hours a day of lessons and
studying during the week? You go to
school on Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00 am-5:00 pm to study more.
Followed by doksoshil, of course. Final exams take place next week and I
am
sure there are students who have come to school every single day for the
last 3+
weeks. It gets even more intense one
week before finals. Again, you should
wonder how that’s possible. Well, during
the week leading up to finals (which is right now), teachers allow the students
time to study; all I do as a teacher is go to the classroom and hangout at the
podium while the students do what they do best: study. Lucky me.
While you are reading this, you are probably wondering, “what are they studying?” I still wonder what exactly they are studying beyond
knowing it’s a school subject. While I
know they sometimes write papers for history, science or Korean, homework is
not regularly assigned; so, all those hours really are spent studying. Though, I think a better word than studying
might be practicing, because, I think they simply do loads and loads of
exercises.
 |
There are standing desks at the back of all classrooms for
students to use when they are feeling sleepy. |
You might also be wondering why so much studying. There
are a couple of reasons. One, Korean
school is an extremely competitive environment.
One cannot simply choose to forgo all of those hours studying because
they will fall behind everyone else, or so it’s assumed. Secondly, all three years of high school are
seen as a giant period of studying for Sooneung. Sooneung is the Korean national exam taken
every November by all 3rd grade high school students across the
nation. It is the test that determines
which universities students will be able to attend; or as they see it, it’s the
test that determines the rest of their lives.
The test is taken so seriously that 3rd graders do not
participate in any extracurricular activities, they do not have gym, music or
art classes, and they are not taught by me.
Not a moment of their 3rd school year is ‘wasted’ on subjects
not included in Sooneung. (While English
is included in Sooneung, as there is no speaking test, I am of no help. 3rd graders only have time to learn
and practice grammar and vocabulary with their Korean English teachers)
 |
Happy 3rd graders. They finished sooneung in November and only
come until noon everyday. I think that all they do is hang out. |
As I alluded above, I only teach 1st and 2nd
grades, seeing each class once a week. That
comes to 20 classes and 700 students every week. My biggest obstacle is to actually get my
students to speak in class. Korean high
school students are used to being passive learners in the classroom because Korean
teachers generally stand at the front of the classroom lecturing from the
book, never leaving the podium to walk amongst the students. Students are often allowed to sleep or work
on other subjects while the teacher lectures.
As this is what students are used to, it has been and continues to be a
struggle to get my students focused on actually speaking English. When I ask
questions, students just stare. I know
they understand every word I say but they refuse to answer. I have actually never had a student raise
their hand to answer a question. Never. This doesn’t stop me from pointing to a
student to illicit a response, however.
(Side note: many classes have one or two students that answer my
questions quietly but willingly, however, I can’t and don’t let them answer
every question every day). Students’
unwillingness to engage in conversation has led to lots of role-play, much to
their dismay (they hate having to move).
Teaching is
also made more difficult by the fact that
students stay in the same classroom all day, with teachers moving to
them. I feel that this gives me less authority
because I am like a visitor in their classroom rather than the other way
around. While I don’t generally have behavior
problems, I do have students who constantly try to sleep (can you blame
them?). Moreover, classrooms are a wreck! Seeing as students spend the
better part of
their daily lives inside that same room, classrooms are like a home.
Being a home to 35 teenage girls means they
are jam-packed with crap! Classrooms are
chock-full of haphazardly stacked books, pillows, bags, blankets,
toothbrushes,
cups, empty milk cartons, mirrors, candy wrappers, and anything else you
can
imagine would be in a teen’s bedroom.
Most students keep a blanket and small pillow at school to catch some Zs
during breaks (or as I have already mentioned, during class) and every
student
keeps a toothbrush to use after every meal (teachers also have
toothbrushes at
school—it’s a Korean thing). The state
of the classrooms makes it difficult to walk around the desks or move
the desks
for group work (not to mention the distraction the mess creates). I do
the best I can but often trip over
stacks of books on the floor as I roam around the students.
 |
The students just moved classrooms so they are actually clean.
I am disappointed I couldn't show what they usually look like. |
Two evenings a week, I teach conversation classes from 7:00-9:00
pm. These are my favorite classes to
teach because the small class size (less than 10) makes students more
comfortable with speaking and students choose to sign up for them which means
they are actually eager to learn English. Much of the information I have learned and
written about above is in large part thanks to these conversation classes. My conversation students act like cultural
informants because I make them practice speaking by answering my curiosities. They also get to ask me what it’s like in
American high school, so it’s a win-win situation.
 |
| One of my conversation classes. |
Finally, there are two school holidays, one in winter and
one in summer, each lasting about a month.
Calling it a holiday is misleading, however, as the students continue to
go to school for most of each break.
There is only one week during each holiday that students actually stay
at home (My guess is that they aren’t actually at home, but studying at
doksoshils or attending hagwons). The
only differences that I have surmised, between regular school and holiday
school, is that there is a change of schedule during the 3 weeks of holiday and
students don’t have class before 9:00 am.
I sure have
painted a pretty banal image of Korean high
school life. However, I want to point
out that while many of my students wish they could sleep more, have more
free
time or have the ability to participate in sports and other
extracurricular
activities, they still appear to be pretty happy. Everyday during lunch
and dinner, each of
which last an hour, I watch my students fool around and laugh with each
other
just like any other teenager. I think it helps that they are all in it
together and can look forward to finishing Sooneung and going to
university. It’s not entirely dismal for them.
 |
Students playing during lunch.
|
If you are interested to see more about what life is like during the final year of high school, you should check out this 20 minute documentary. It follows a 3rd grader during the months leading up to Sooneung.
Written by Elaine at http://eginger122.blogspot.com/2013/12/korean-high-school-life-as-seen-by.html
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Thank you Ben and Elaine for these amazing writings. I'm sorry I've posted your writings before you reply my request. If you mind reading your writing on my blog, just tell me and I would do what you want :-) .
