By Here is an article about the school located in South Korea’s side of the DMZ:
This could be any school in rural South Korea: a two-story brown brick building, fronted by a wide soccer field and surrounded by plots of sweet potatoes and beans.
But this is no ordinary school, and this is no ordinary farming village.
Just 300 yards from Daesungdong Elementary is the border with North Korea, one of the most heavily guarded demarcation lines in the world.
A few years ago, this school in the Demilitarized Zone was in danger of closing due to lack of students. Thanks to incentives — including free English lessons from American soldiers — Daesungdong is now turning away students from other cities and is rapidly becoming one of the most respected schools in the region.
“I’m proud that my kids attend this school,” said Jung Young Sun, a hair salon owner whose son and daughter, ages 11 and 13, commute by bus from the nearby town of Paju. The children spent a year on a waiting list. “Other parents envy me.”
The remarkable turnaround has kept the heart of the village intact.
While the closure of the school might not push residents to abandon the village and the perks that come from living there, it would alter the very nature of the community, with Daesungdong becoming little more than a collection of farms run by aging residents, said principal Kim Doek Won.
“The school is the symbol of the village,” he said. “If the school is not there, it will not be a village anymore.” [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link.
She hasn’t seen...
6:30 pm on August 14th, 2011 1
Maybe things have changed since I left Korea, but the parents I met seemed to not care at all whether their kids were skilled at conversational English. Their big thing was memorizing words and to be able to read English.
7:00 pm on August 14th, 2011 2
“parents I met seemed to not care at all whether their kids were skilled at conversational English.”
They still do. Great fools.
7:15 pm on August 14th, 2011 3
Is it a public school? I’m asking because, normally, the parents must have an address in the immediate area of a public school in order for their kids to begin attending a school (a comedy was made several years ago in which the father, a single parent and small business owner, was obsessed with buying an apartment in Kangnam in order to send his kid to a school there). We were able to unload our apartment for more than it was worth to parents who wanted their kids to go to the school located nearby for that very reason.
It’s also common practice to visit the ward office and change the kids’ home address to one which is located near the school, usually that of a friend or relative’s home. Once class has begun, parents change their kids’ home address back (once a kid starts studying at a school, he or she can continue going to that school no matter where he or she resides in the city).
To return to my question, I’m asking because I would suspect that some local residents are “selling” their addresses. That would bring a whole different dimension to the reason why some parents consider sending their kids to that school as a status symbol.
7:27 pm on August 14th, 2011 4
#1,
No, not so much. A greater number of people now understand the importance of being bilingual or multilingual.
#2,
Unilingual English speaker? You shouldn’t take any pride in being unilingual.
7:40 pm on August 14th, 2011 5
#3,
I had native mastery of both Korean and English beginning in grade school and I have functional mastery of a third language.
7:47 pm on August 14th, 2011 6
And, TD, it’s foolish that you shouldn’t take pride in being unilingual. You should be proud of being able to use the language or languages you speak for anything productive, no matter how many languages you can speak, no matter which country the language comes from as long as what you did with it is productive.
And Korean parents still don’t understand what it means to be bilingual, or how to teach their children to be one. A vast majority of them still think if their kids merely got great scores in KSAT English or TOEIC, their kids are bilingual.
8:08 pm on August 14th, 2011 7
#6,
You’re confusing linguistic pride with pride in being unilingual…and I misread your comment as, “They still don’t” which is why I asked if you were a unilingual speaker of English.
And, no, an increasingly large number of Korean parents do want their kids to speak a second language fluently. For them, test scores just aren’t enough, although they are often the only means for them of gauging whether their kids can communicate in English or not since they themselves can’t communicate in the second language of choice (there just aren’t many opportunities to use a second language outside of the classroom in South Korea).
Although she speaks English fluently, my wife is one of those parents. Our kid speaks 4 languages fluently, actually (he’s learning 3 at home and a fourth through lessons and playmates who are fluent in that target language).
PS. I speak 4 languages, two as a native speaker, and I understand a few others perfectly well if a high register is being used (once you know one Latin language, it’s easy to get the others if the speaker or writer uses many Latinate words).
8:44 pm on August 14th, 2011 8
A vastly greater number of those Korean parents still just want their children to have good scores in certificates so that they’ll have easier time landing a job or entering university in Korea. Most hagwons catering to primary and secondary educations still focus their effort on helping students raise their grades, not improving conversational skills, and most students after entering university don’t continue their English studies at all beyond what their course or resume for a job requires (high score in certificate of tests that still don’t involve a lot of speaking).
9:10 pm on August 14th, 2011 9
K – any good Korean language news websites or blogs you’d recommend?
9:21 pm on August 14th, 2011 10
KPost of Yahoo Korea is an interesting place to visit, though there aren’t many blogs yet because it opened just recently. There are also Naver and Daum blogs but the range of topics is all over the place.
12:05 am on August 15th, 2011 11
#8,
It doesn’t change the fact that a greater number of parents actually want their kids to really acquire a second language.
12:14 am on August 15th, 2011 12
#11
It still doesn’t change the fact that those parents think acquiring a second language means high scores printed on language exam certificates.
12:55 am on August 15th, 2011 13
Teadrinker wrote:
My information is somewhat dated, but unless there have been big changes in the way things are done there, I doubt this is happening in Daesungdong. The village has always had special status and the residents have enjoyed perks such as tax free income and gov’t provided plots of farm land much larger than what most farmers in South Korea have. But it comes at a price – among other restrictions, they have a very strict curfew and house checks. All residents have to contact the police when they are not going to be gone home overnight. They used to have to get permission just to leave or re-enter the village, but I think that changed.
3:54 am on August 15th, 2011 14
#13,
I don’t mean that they are selling their property, but the right to use their address on the school application form.
3:56 am on August 15th, 2011 15
#12,
Because they have no other way to gauge whether their kids can speak in English or not…Really, I’ve already explained that. Anyways, I’m done. It’s turning into a circular argument.
4:31 am on August 15th, 2011 16
#15
“Because they have no other way to gauge whether their kids can speak in English or not,”
No. It’s really because the parents don’t really care much if the kid can speak English very well as well as he can get grades high.
I reiterate, most Korean parents are fine even if they know their children’s conversational English is mediocre as long as their grades and certificate scores are high.
They’ll spent their precious money more for improving the grades and scores rather than for improving conversational English.
Korean people are poor at speaking English despite the huge sum of money they put into the effort because they are ordered by the parents to be taught the wrong way. This is true even for many of the Koreans who’ve been abroad to English-speaking countries. They are looking more for the credentials and prestige that comes with having studied and lived in English-speaking countries (it’s a nice addition to your spec in your resume) than really for having their English skills improved.
3:41 pm on August 15th, 2011 17
Korean mothers will drive THROUGH the DMZ for a school that has genuine Americans teaching English-ee.
7:26 pm on August 15th, 2011 18
Well, that certainly explains why Korean parents pay higher tuition to send their children to schools with native English speakers. Every single parent I had contact with really wanted his or her child to speak English fluently. Both the child and I were expected to speak English only during the lesson.
8:10 pm on August 15th, 2011 19
Sonagi,
I know parents would want their kids to both get high scores AND use English properly, if their ability and their kids’ own ability permits, but if it was a matter of realistic choice that had to sacrifice one or the other for greater efficiency of invested money and time and for greater end benefit at the conclusion of their investment, they will go for improving scores first. The problem is that it’s damnably difficult to combine creative learning required for constructing sentences that we write and speak every day now with rote memorization that’s designed to make students memorize and remember as many words and grammar rules as he can in the quickest span of time.
The parents still go for improving scores before they go for improving conversational skills if they cannot benefit from both, and in a lot of cases that’s true.
I repeat, most Korean parents are fine that their kids speak English like cravens as long as their scores still help them enter university or get a job. They don’t care about conversational skills as much as they care for the scores.
2:31 am on August 16th, 2011 20
I’d rather face artillery and mortars in a school than street thugs and hoodlums.
8:03 am on August 16th, 2011 21
“I repeat, most Korean parents are fine that their kids speak English like cravens as long as their scores still help them enter university or get a job.”
All right, since it obviously went right over your head. The point I’ve been making from the beginning is not that most don’t care, but rather that an increasing number of them do. There, I’ve said it all. I won’t get caught in this circular argument again.
8:30 am on August 16th, 2011 22
TD,
Someone asked if rote learning still took more importance over creative learning aimed at improving conversational skills in the hearts of Korean parents. You said ‘No, not so much.’ And I said actually still much. What’s wrong about my argument?
10:24 am on August 16th, 2011 23
#22,
Well…