Free Market Education
Well, okay. It’s two-tiered education: a free market alongside a socialist system.
Under this system, students essentially go to school twice — once during the day and then again at night at the tutoring academies. It is a relentless grind.
Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S.
Nearly three of every four South Korean kids participate in the private market. In 2012, their parents spent more than $17 billion on these services. That is more than the $15 billion spent by Americans on videogames that year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. The South Korean education market is so profitable that it attracts investments from firms like Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group and A.I.G.
The Korean private market has reduced education to the one in-school variable that matters most: the teacher.
It is about as close to a pure meritocracy as it can be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers are free agents. They don’t need to be certified. They don’t have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers. (Wall Street Journal)
SOuth Korea’s Education system is booming, they are dominating U.S. education, plus they have competition in multiple markets of education. The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article about their private hagwons for tutoring.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
Too bad these kids are stuck going to the government system also… So much wasted time…
Does seem like there is time wasted…wonder how content these children are. Does that matter?
Definitely does. This system stunts a persons growth in other areas. Education is a tool, not an end in itself.
What other area’s would the growth be stunted? Because it seems to me that while they work harder than American kids in education, they aren’t suffering in any social aspect.
^Exactly
Interesting contrast in an interesting country…
School choice is an imperative part to reform.
Why? I don’t think that South Koreans have more school choice, they choose tutors in the private market if you read the article.
Yeah, I wouldn’t consider that school choice. Even Dr. Goodman states it in the beginning: “a free market alongside a socialist system”
Imagine how much more efficient these children could be if they were able to get the initial “private education” that seems to be helping them test better. Imagine if their results were not from 12 hour days of studying, rather, 8 hours of productive learning. What other skills could be learned if they had more time for other activities?
Don’t like the public school structure in education BUT the free market private tutor system and lack of teacher unions show a huge improvement compared to the US. Hope they change and allow for school choice.