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Published: December 1st 2006
A girl in one of my classes asked me, "If Americans go to school less than Koreans and study less than Koreans then why does America have more geniuses than Korea?"
This is a question that requires more thought than usual because it asks about deeper implications on the differences between the Korean education system compared to the American education system.
Koreans are very smart. They study much harder than the average American. Koreans are taught to memorize. They go to school Monday through Saturday for an average of 3 hours more a day than Americans. At age 13 they take midterm tests and final tests for which they study for several weeks in advance. I teach at a private academy where kids come
after regular school. Right now, during exam season, I have kids not coming to class because they are busy studying for their exams which are weeks away. At age 13, most Americans don't know what a final test is; more or less know how to study for one!
I realize that Koreans are taught more information. They generally have a greater amount of knowledge about a greater number of subjects. However, the answer to her question stems from the idea that Americans are better taught
what to do with the information they learn.
My favorite part of the books I teach are the W&H Questions exercises. In this exercise in the books, the students are given statements with part of the statement highlighted. The exercise asks the students to turn the statements into questions with the highlighted part being the answer to the question formed. (Any native English speaker can do this exercise without thinking about it.)
This exercise tends to be more difficult for the students because turning a statement into a question is not as easy as defining the variables (subject, verb, etc) and inserting them into the proper equation (question word + verb + subject, etc). I sometimes wish that English was more mathematical, but the fact is that it is not. This makes it slightly more difficult to teach, and more difficult for the students, but it also tends to provide useful lessons for the students.
Through the early evolution of teaching this exercise, I have found one useful way to introduce it is to list the possible question words and when they should be used. We end up with the following list:
Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, How many/much, and Which. These are all of the possible question words/phrases of which I have discovered, or are useful in this particular exercise. After listing these words on the marker board, with the help of my students, I add the proper elements with which you use these question words. In order, we end up with the following:
People, Things, Time, Place, Reason, Method, Quantity, and Option.
These all make sense, correct? To the English teaching novice, you may be surprised with the ease at which this list appears to make sense. And maybe to the English teaching expert, you may be appalled at the lack of completeness of this list, or at the over-simplification. It is the simplification that makes it easier to understand for the students. There may be more, and this list may be wrong someway, but for the purpose of my classes so far, this list has been truly useful. I need to say nothing more than "when the subject is 'people' use 'who', when it is 'things' use 'what', when it is a 'time' use 'when'" and so on.
Well the point of this teaching method explanation is to combine what I teach with what I have deduced in attempting to answer this young girl's question about learning in Korea as opposed to learning in America. I feel that current Korean educational policies and methods teach Koreans more of the who, what, when, where, how many/much, and which's. However, they are lacking in the know-how's and know-why's. This is where Americans tip to the advantage. It is my experience that the average American may know less concrete, factual knowledge as compared to the average Korean (the
average SAT score of my
middle school kids is 1400). But when it comes to knowing how to think, how to figure out, and combining many things into a completely different thought or answer, it is the American that will excel. Hence the little girl's question, "then why does America have more geniuses?" Her specific use of the 'genius,' I presume refers to the recognized thinkers from America, more than it refers to people like Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy phenomenon who just knew the answers to a lot of trivia questions.
Maybe this response answers her question more than as just an explanation but possibly as an example. If you asked a Korean why America has more geniuses, he may simply respond that America has more people and thus a statistical advantage. This may be true, and it may be the correct answer, but there is little thinking outside of the box involved in this response. Or the Korean may answer any number of other logical responses having to do with the who, what, when, where, how many, and which's of America and Korea. But I doubt that he would combine any how (how I teach the W&H Question exercises) with any why's (why Americans think differently) to develop the kind of response I have just divulged here. A Korean would likely utilize more knowledge in answering the question than actual thinking. My response is a product more of thinking, than it is of knowledge.
It is my current belief that it is America's policy of teaching children not just who, what, when, where, and which to think, but how and why to think that allows it to create "more geniuses." In school growing up, I know that I did not learn very many things, but the one thing I did learn, that I think will set me apart from many people from other parts of the world, was I learned
how to think.
There is nothing more important than knowing how and why to think. Thinking is more than knowing. Knowledge is more than just knowledge.
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Manda
non-member comment
Profound insight
At the end of this wonderful adventure, while it is still fresh in your mind, it would be great to get you to come speak at some teacher conventions about the cultural differences you are identifying. Policy makers love and NEED to hear outside prospectives about our current educational system. Glad you're blogging; your words can be, if you let them, a true return on your "timely" investment.