Korean Overeducation?

South Korea spends double the U.S. amount on primary education.  Its college matriculation rate, 80%, is higher than the American one for high school.  Yet, according to South Korean professor, Jasper Kim, writing in a Wall Street Journal article (February 29, 2012) sent to us by Dana Wiser, the Korean obsession on education "leads to vicious, counterproductive competition and, in the end, more studying than real learning."

"A typical East Asian high school student often must follow a 5 am to midnight compressed schedule, filled with class instruction followed by private institute courses, for up to six days a week, with little or no room for socializing...  Asian parents, nearly without exception, demand that their children attend an elite university.  Parents are typically involved in the smallest minutiae of their children's education.  Such tiger mothers (tiger fathers are still extremely rare) always want to be seen as close to their children, and hover around them physically and mentally.

"...The competition for an elite education in South Korea does not start in high school.   Parents strategize how to get their child into the best preschool possible, which according to the thinking, will then get them into the best kindergarten and on up to the most elite university...

"As a tiger education insider, I can attest that throughout this cradle-to-cap-and-gown marathon of studying, very little actual learning occurs.  South Korea's raw testing numbers, which look great on international education surveys, obscure the fact that students generally cannot engage a question with critical analysis.  They know the what, but don't know the why."

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