Kristianstad University, Sweden
Assignment
1. Academic culture of Korea Lee, Hunjae
A main point of
difference between Korea(East Asia) and other contries(Western) is the world
stongest “education fever”. Korean parents are very zealous for the education
of their children. They spend a lot of money on their children’s private
classes to let them go on to distinguished universities. And most of teenagers
in Korea usually feel the stress of school life. It is like a social problem. But
there is a trade-off naturally. The rate of going on to university in Korea
approximates to 85%. It is an enormous percentage compared to about 30% of
Sweden. These highly educated system has contributed to super-speed growing
economy after Korean war. For that reason academic culture in university is
somewhat biased in favor of practical, applied study to make money until now. Government
recently started to increase concentrated financial support in basic sciences
and humanities.
Korean students
are more competitive than here. That’s because scoring is based on comparative
grading system in general. It encourages the strong sense of rivalry. So you
can see quite many students in library even in holiday midnight. It is not
unusual. On the other hand, they also have big festival of university and enjoy
themselves to the full in every semester. In the fesitival week, most lectures
are skipped by professor’s decision. Everywhere in the campus is full of
student’s cookouts, street stalls, bars, playing activities, performance of
group bands. Campus is crowded with students and their friends from other
universities.
Looking into
school affairs more detail, all lectures are started and ended at the same week
unlike Sweden. It is similar to United States. In usual there are two big exam,
mid-term and final exam to measure knowledge and learning. The form of
examination has diversity, sometimes the question is given as an objective
test, sometimes subjective writing. If the class type is a seminar or
discussion, professor evaluates students’ activities such as the degree of
participation and their own individual/group presentations. Very few oral exam
can be given.
Korea is no
exception to the globalization, internationalization. Teaching methods reflect
the world trend. The number of lecture using seminar or discussion method are
growing more and more than the traditional lecture that explained by the
one-way teaching. But the atmosphere of the classes is still too calm to expect
active interaction. Students act according to the situation. If there are no question
in that time, they try to read other face each other and hesitate to ask a
professor question. In eastern culture, a quite man has been regarded as a wise
man traditionally. It is quite the opposite of western culture that regard a
silent person as a dumb and stupid. They also concern about asking not good
question and losing their faces. Moreover such an action is considered rather
impolite for the teacher and wasteful of time. So after the class students
usually go and ask the teacher something if they have a question. Nowadays many
teachers always emphasize the active participation and free question to encourage
students to change their attitude. Maybe it will takes a little time.
In addition, the
relationship between teacher and student is so special in Korea. We have a day
for teachers, 15th May to appreciate teachers. The relationship is
not temporal but lifelong, especially in the case of teacher in charge. We
visit or call to the former, elementary, middle, high school teachers for
appreciating their efforts and saying hello. All students have great respect
for their teachers without condition. It is like a parents-children
relationship. Students tend to learn and mimic not only the knowledge but also
the wisdom and fruitful experience of their teacher. It may seem like that
everything is perfect in the western perspective that has individual culture
and wants to be more collective behavior. But everything has weak points. For
example, people hardly can criticize their teachers. And teacher can be likely
to assume an arrogant attitude.