By Yet more soldiers doing the right thing while stationed in Korea:
Early last year, Gwanho Elementary School in Waegwon was on the verge of closing.
Enrollment at the 35-year-old school in the tiny village about 160 miles southeast of Seoul had dropped to 47 students, three shy of South Korea’s minimum requirement to keep it open.
“Everybody felt so embarrassed, depressed and shocked,” principal Choi Jae-yeol said.
“Think about you having no school in your hometown.”
The school’s community — teachers, parents, alumni and neighbors — began a campaign to save their school. And they came up with an idea: Ask the soldiers at nearby Camp Carroll to help.
The soldiers agreed and began visiting the school regularly to provide English lessons. News spread, and more and more parents in the region looked to Gwanho as their preferred choice for their children.
Now, more than a year after the soldiers began volunteering, the school’s enrollment is up 64 percent and it is no longer on the government’s chopping block.
“The U.S. servicemembers saved our school,” Choi said through an interpreter. “My heart is too full for words. What can I say but thank you, thank you.” [Stars & Stripes]
Make sure to read the whole article but the school is now having the problem of too many parents now wanting to enroll their children into the school to take advantage of the English education being offered by the volunteer soldiers.
It is the sad reality. No mistake...
11:09 pm on December 13th, 2008 1
Maybe they could just transfer 3 of the
shady little rich bastardspoor little orphans enrolled at Camp George.4:27 am on December 14th, 2008 2
Bilingual programs are popular in the States as well. Our oldest is in a Korean immersion program, and parents have locked onto the idea that bilingual education makes kids smarter. I'm not so sure that's true, but a bilingual program does boost a school's popularity quite a bit.
5:55 am on December 14th, 2008 3
Bilingualism doesn't make kids "smarter," i.e., it doesn't raise their IQs. It does facilitate brain plasticity, allowing for more flexible and adaptive thinking. MRI-based research shows that true bilinguals use different parts of the brain when communicating in a language than monolinguals do when using that same language. I recall that MRI research also shows that bilinguals use different parts of the brain when solving math problems.
An immersion program is one kind of bilingual program. A former colleague used to teach in LA's Korean-English dual immersion program several years ago. She said that by the end of elementary school, the native English speakers could not keep up in Korean because of two reasons: three hours a day was not enough input to acquire the huge vocabulary needed to do academic work; and parents at home were unable to assist with homework or otherwise provide direct Korean language instructional support. The Korean kids, on the other hand, got English language input in public, Korean input at home plus homework help in both languages.
5:09 pm on December 14th, 2008 4
Absolutely, I can confirm the problem with non-heritage learners; I've seen it mentioned in college and professional programs as well. In our school some of the kids still don't even write Hangul well, after several years. Others are quite far along, taking the TOPIK test, etc., in fifth or sixth grade.
Korean, for a long time, has not had what I would call an academic track to study — one can't simply study a textbook or take a class and expect to become fluent, without a lot of extracurricular support.