I Wouldn't Mind a Piece of That

And I'm not talking about poon-tang. From the Korea Times:

According to the Bank of Korea (BOK) Sunday, the nation's education spending totaled 15 trillion won in the first six months of the year, up 9.1 percent from 13.8 trillion won in the same period last year. It is the largest increase since 2003 when households' education costs jumped 11.3 percent.

$13.8 billion! Bloody hell! (BTW is that the American English spelling of totalled?)

So by rights, Korean parents are on track to spend $30 billion this year on after-school education. Now not all of that goes on English per se, there are lots of 학원 out there for Math, Science, Korean, Art and various other subjects. But I would hazard a guess and say the majority of it is going on English.

Now if the government spent $30 billion on education this year you might actually mitigate some of the need for said after school programs. (Korea spends about 4% of GDP on education. Google it, I'm not gonna get all the sources for you!)

Despite the government's new found love of English (albeit the GA version over and above Received Pronunciation) and the "New Deal" of a chicken in every pot an English Teacher in every school and an under-qualified university student in every countryside school, English education here is buggered.

How is it, that in a country where students get English instruction from literally first grade (in the case of my school) and sometimes even before that, they can come out the other end with an undergraduate degree in the language and fail to string a sentence together? (And I'd have to say it's not just English. I know a German major and two French majors, one who has gone on to teach et ma Francaise c'est si movais!!???)

How is it that in a country obsessed with getting exposure to native speakers (mileage of which may vary) Korean English speakers fail to pronounce even the easiest of consonant phonemes!? (see the ㅂ/ㅍ /b/, /v/, /p/, /f/ dichotomy as a starter down a deep, dark, twisty path.)

Easing the burden of education expenses would require reforming the education system to reduce reliance on private tutoring institutions and lower the out-of-pocket cost borne by families

That last one was from the OECD.

And I'd have to agree. The Korean education system, as a whole, needs to be brought into the 20th century at least. I'm not advocating a Tomorrow's Schools approach - that took a while to figure out - baby steps are needed, but c'mon, obviously the parents aren't happy, otherwise they wouldn't be pouring buckets of money in "Bum-fuck 어학원" left right and centre.

Of course when it comes to English education there's a whole compendium of problems. The least of which being that whatever happens, few, if any native speakers will be consulted. By way of example, have you seen the National Curriculum for 4th - 6th grades? Hardly a word of English in it!

Will there be any reform of any substance in my lifetime as an English teacher in Korea? Probably not. And my attempts to reform the system from within? Meh.

I can't suggest any solutions (I'm still studying this stuff), but the comments are open.

I need a drink.