The Missing P's

What makes a student successful? Good teachers? Good schools? Good parents? Good communities? Wealth or socioeconomic status? God-given talent? Hard work? Pure luck?

I can narrow it down to two things. They are the two biggest differences I have observed between Korean students and American students.

I teach in a private language academy--we strictly teach English, nothing else--to kids in grades 1-6, AFTER the regular school day. I can't speak for public schools, where students are learning all subjects, but I have NOT noticed a big difference in behavior. Kids here misbehave just as much as their American counterparts. They goof off, get off-task, daydream, forget their books at home, don't do their homework, talk to their friends in class--everything I was led to believe simply didn't happen here, which is why I originally believed they did so much better than us. Don't get me wrong--I didn't come here to escape from American children. I loved my students at home, but I've been wondering what makes the test scores of other countries higher than in the United States. I worked hours upon hours of every day, non-stop, exhausting myself to no end to make my lessons engaging and encompassing multiple uses of intelligence--like I was taught and expected to. Teachers and schools word hard. Really hard. Probably the hardest working people in America. So the blame can't rest solely on us.

Here are my ideas:

1. Parental support.

Parents have extremely high expectations for their children in Korea and push them harder than American parents do. In fact, the suicide rate for pre-teens and teens is sickeningly high. The pressure is really on here. Parents at the academy I work at actually get upset if we don't give enough homework. Parents will even pull their kids out of one academy and place them in one that has a reputation for giving more homework. This, needless to say, never happened to me in America. Parents sit with them while they do homework, test them while they study, get involved in whatever way they can. Education doesn't start or stop at school but continues in the home. They nurture their children's minds. Once when I visited a museum on a Saturday afternoon, I saw a group of what I would guess were third or fourth graders. They were taking notes on each exhibition. Whether they were with their parents or with their teacher, I wasn't sure, but I was impressed. How many American students get the opportunity to visit a museum or any other educational institution on a random Saturday afternoon? The successul ones. Parents here are constantly stimulating their children with useful, educational information, making them into hard-working, self-reliant students. It may be a cultural difference, but it's a big one. High expectations translate into success.

2. Practice, practice, practice.

Kids are in school or academy (math, English, science, music) all day. The students at my academy attend classes here for an average of 3 hours. Some come early for something called E-camp, an computer program to improve listening and speaking skills. Most stay for a daily vocabulary test and to make up any homework they did not complete for that day's class. In the regular school day, for elementary students, school starts at 8:30 AM and ends around 2:30 PM. Middle school and high school students: 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM. In addition, high school students either stay at school to study or attend private academies (like mine) until about 10:00 PM. If you do the math, that's 15 hours of studying in an educational institution, not to mention the homework and studying they need to complete outside of school and academy. About a year ago or so, a new law was passed forbading academies from running past 10 PM because students were staying in academies until 2 to 3 AM in the morning, and this was deemed unhealthy. A student texted me once on a Sunday morning around 10:30 to say hello. When I asked what she was doing, she said, "studying." Three extra hours of studying/academy per day times 5 days a week translates to 15 hours more than American students are doing.
Guess how many months Korean students get off for summer vacation? One. That means they are in school TWO MONTHS more than ours each school year. 8 weeks of school times 7 hours per day (regular school) plus the extra 3 hours of academy per day translates to 560 more hours of school and studying than American students. After doing the math, I've just realized something. Korean kids go to school on Saturdays too--two Saturdays per month for about 4 hours. SO, that's 4 hours times 2 times per month times 10 months of schooling (They get time off in the winter, too) plus the original 560 hours, for a grand total of... 640 hours. Is it any wonder they are blowing us out of the water?

Perhaps our schools ARE doing enough--in the time given. A typical American school day lasts from about 8 AM to 3 PM. Is this enough time? The test scores show it: we are falling behind. Therefore, our measily 7-hour days just aren't cutting it If we want to compete with the world, we've got to increase the length of a school day and decrease the number of summer vacation days. As a teacher, who works her tail off, this does not exactly appeal to me either. Sometimes I'm ready to throw in the towel by lunch from pure exhaustion from being on my feet (usually in heels) for 4-5 hours tending to the needs of my students.

Are the teachers that much better here in Korea? Absolutely not. Do the schools have better resources--more books and computers? Not necessarily. Why are we blaming teachers and schools for failing kids? Maybe students simply need more practice than what 7 hours can provide. More studying, I can guarantee, will lead to higher overall test scores.

We know the two big issues--parental support and practice, so what do we do about it? What are students doing when they get home? Sleeping, watching TV, playing sports, sitting at the computer, eating, playing video games? Did I mention that Korean students manage to do all these things too--along with studying? You will see kids playing at the park until midnight. Young children only get about 6 hours of sleep every night, while high schoolers I've heard get about 3 or 4 hours. I'm not asking parents or students to sacrifice their health but to better balance learning with "fun." . We don't have after-school academies in America. Some schools support after-school programs, but how many students participate and who participates? Not many attend, and those who do probably are already successful in school. Should schools require that students stay after school? Would academies be successful in America? Can we convince parents to pay for extra education? Can we convince students to go?

After writing the first draft of this blog, I got deeper and deeper into a book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This book outlines what makes successful people successful, and while I'm not finished with the book, I'm starting to see a pattern. People don't luck into success, and they don't necessarily get there on their own either. There are many factors that go into a successful person (ethnicity, cultural upbringing, the century or decade you were born in, unique opportunities given to you), but can you guess the two that stood out to me the most--what really separates successful students from unsuccessful students? You guessed it: parental support and practice. In one study discussed in Outliers by Karl Alexander, he tested the math scores of children from low, middle, and high income households. From September to June, students made obvious advances in math. Sometimes low-income students even outperformed their high-income counterparts. However, when students were tested in September, after the three-month long summer break, the high-income students outperformed the low-come students by more than 40%. What does that tell us then? High-income students are given more opportunities to learn over the summer. Their parents take them to museums, the library, vacations--various activities and resources are at their disposal. Not so for the low-income students. Gladwell writes, "...the way in which education has been discussed in the United States is backwards. An enormous amount of time is spent talking about reducing class size, rewriting curricula, ...increasing school funding--all of which assumes that there is something... wrong with the jobs schools are doing... Schools work. The only problem with school, for the kids who aren't achieving, is that there isn't enough of it."

xx
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