Correction d'une page traduite en anglais
Posted: 07 Mar 2010 13:35
Bonjour,
Pour répondre à plusieurs demandes de correspondants, j'ai eu besoin de traduire cette page http://ecoles.alternative-democratique. ... e-en-Coree en anglais.
J'ai fait de mon mieux, et voici ci-dessous ce que ça donne. Est-ce que quelqu'un pourrait vérifier, corriger les erreurs, éventuellement clarifier ? C'est destiné à être lu par des Coréens.
En vous remerciant par avance,
Rémi
I'm a retired primary school French teacher and I'd like to make things clear: I'm in no position to criticize the Korean educational system. Korea has achieved great successes in the last fifty years. In France, schools are in a big crisis. I think that we, French people, should look at what’s been done elsewhere before making decisions.
In the last PISA report (2006), Korea is on par with Finland in literacy and math; she occupies an intermediate position between Finland and France for sciences. That’s the reason why I’ve been interested with Korean education.
I was amazed to see how it goes in Finnish schools. I am equally amazed by education in Korea.
I have to say right away that I could not visit any Korean school. When asked, people are extremely reluctant and it seems more than difficult. I did not follow official channels, because I did not want to take the risk of visiting a Potemkin school.
However, I have been able to collect a survey from primary school and secondary school teachers, on condition of anonymity for most of them.
Finland and Korea have at least one thing in common: they are two countries in which the defense of culture is a matter of survival. Both were threatened in their very existence during the twentieth century, Finland by Russia, Korea by Japan.
Korea is predominantly mountainous and poor in natural resources, with a population density four times that of France.
In September 1953, Korea was an underdeveloped country, ravaged by war. Freed from the caste system, freed from the Japanese, the Koreans wanted to do everything to give proper education to their children. Fifty years later, their country is amongst the most developed.
Initially, the Koreans were admitted in colleges, high schools and universities by entrance examination. This quickly led to a ranking of the schools. Entrance examinations were held in successive waves, the first wave being for the best institutions. After the publication of their results, it was the turn of the next wave. The competition became increasingly hard to access the best schools.
In 1972 the military government decided to restore equal opportunity: he decided that pupils would go to the school of their area. Today, most schools operate on this principle of equality between them.
Many Koreans felt that this move reduced the teaching quality. They reacted in two ways: firstly, by moving so that their children could be enrolled in what they still regarded as the best schools; secondly, by giving them extra lessons on private courses that became parallel schools.
Today, 84% of Koreans attend universities. Universities select students with an entrance examination. The entire Korean school system is focused on those entrance exams, even for children who have no desire to attend the university.
To be recruited by one of the best universities has important consequences. It ensures the highest social positions, especially since there is solidarity between the alumni from the same university.
The consequences of this competition for access to the best university are determining.
— First, the Koreans have two days of classes, the first in ordinary schools as we know them, then they move at about 6 pm to parallel private courses. The Korean government recently banned courses after midnight.
To get an idea of what it represents in the life of teenagers, I'll take the example of a boarding school of Wonju because I have its precise timetable. As students are boarding, they do not attend alternative school. The school provides them with both regular education and extra education.
The students get up at 5:50. Their classes begin at 7:20 and last until 12:30; that’s nearly 5 hours. In the afternoon, they resume at 13:20 until 16:10, almost 3 hours. In the evening, it starts again at 19:00 and lasts until midnight. School days long almost 13 hours.
On Sundays and holidays, students get up at 8:30 and again they study until midnight. One Sunday a month is free and students are allowed to visit their families.
— This inhuman effort affects health. A teenager needs at least nine hours of sleep. In Western countries, we get alarmed at the reduction of sleep time due to the misuse of new technologies, which produces fatigue, problems of attention, sometimes depression. Yet it is far from Korea where the institution itself deprives young people of sleeping time – less than six hours per night! This lack of sleep is harmful to learning abilities.
This does not preclude teachers considering that they don’t have time to help their struggling students: "If a student is late in more than one subject, it is extremely difficult to do something for considerable lack of time."
A teacher writes to me that there is usually no homework after parallel school, in reason of the "lack of time for that." But it still happens sometimes, "to see what they can do."
— The cost of alternative education is enormous. In Seoul, prices range from 6 000 to 20 000 euros per year but can reach 50 000 euros for the most expensive. This is often half the family budget.
— The family life revolves around the education system. As an additional course is not enough, you often run from a private school to another. The logistics must be provided by the mother, so much so that when a child is in the last year of secondary school, his family has to live all year round as if it were at war, the mother being involved from early in the morning until late at night.
— Many families are separated: the father stays in Korea and work to finance, the mother and her child (sometimes children, the birth rate being very low) go abroad. This formula is not more expensive than pursuing studies in Korea.
— The teaching practices in ordinary schools are determined by the parallel education. Teachers verify that students have understood what they have learned before in the parallel schools and explain only what has not been well understood. Students who do not attend private courses are dropped: "We do not have time to solve their problems." Additional courses are provided for those who cannot afford to follow the formal education but they are ineffective and rather considered as alibis.
— This system ensures the social reproduction because the children of wealthy families have the best private courses and enter the best universities. Student achievement is directly correlated to the wealth of the family.
— Psychologically, the frantic competition is demeaning. Despite all their efforts, despite the sacrifice of their lives, children and adolescents are not up to the expectations placed in them. The effects are devastating and can lead to suicide, even of children in primary school.
— The rejection of this system leads to delinquency in the classroom and outside the classroom.
— The teachers in ordinary schools don’t feel much better than their students. For most of them, the goal is to help their students, to make them think, to humanize them. A teacher writes to me that the important thing is to "take pleasure with sciences rather than to learn sciences". But the society only asks them to rank the students and they suffer from this conflict between what they would like do and what they have to do.
The population has no confidence in public education.
After reading the PISA reports, I thought the Korean education system was performing well. But if we consider the cost (half of household income toppling the expenditures by the State) and the time spent by the pupils (about three times more than in France), this system is inefficient. After having sacrificed their lives, fifteen years old Koreans are between nine months and two years ahead of the French pupils of the same age, according to the discipline evaluated — and they have no advantage over the Finns who spend even less time in their studies than the French.
After the holy grail of university entrance, young Koreans relax completely. They do everything to catch up in other areas: sports, leisure, travel, friendship and love... As a result, they are less involved in their professional training. They indulge and are difficult to motivate.
Education is therefore a hypersensitive issue in Korea. Unanimity exists on the need to change this system but opinions diverge and even openly opposed to what should be done.
A primary school teacher writes me that attempts to reform the system from the bottom while the ultimate goal is still the success in entrance examinations to university are doomed. He thinks the reforms will be ineffective as long as the ultimate goal remains the same. I believe he's right.
Pour répondre à plusieurs demandes de correspondants, j'ai eu besoin de traduire cette page http://ecoles.alternative-democratique. ... e-en-Coree en anglais.
J'ai fait de mon mieux, et voici ci-dessous ce que ça donne. Est-ce que quelqu'un pourrait vérifier, corriger les erreurs, éventuellement clarifier ? C'est destiné à être lu par des Coréens.
En vous remerciant par avance,
Rémi
I'm a retired primary school French teacher and I'd like to make things clear: I'm in no position to criticize the Korean educational system. Korea has achieved great successes in the last fifty years. In France, schools are in a big crisis. I think that we, French people, should look at what’s been done elsewhere before making decisions.
In the last PISA report (2006), Korea is on par with Finland in literacy and math; she occupies an intermediate position between Finland and France for sciences. That’s the reason why I’ve been interested with Korean education.
I was amazed to see how it goes in Finnish schools. I am equally amazed by education in Korea.
I have to say right away that I could not visit any Korean school. When asked, people are extremely reluctant and it seems more than difficult. I did not follow official channels, because I did not want to take the risk of visiting a Potemkin school.
However, I have been able to collect a survey from primary school and secondary school teachers, on condition of anonymity for most of them.
Finland and Korea have at least one thing in common: they are two countries in which the defense of culture is a matter of survival. Both were threatened in their very existence during the twentieth century, Finland by Russia, Korea by Japan.
Korea is predominantly mountainous and poor in natural resources, with a population density four times that of France.
In September 1953, Korea was an underdeveloped country, ravaged by war. Freed from the caste system, freed from the Japanese, the Koreans wanted to do everything to give proper education to their children. Fifty years later, their country is amongst the most developed.
Initially, the Koreans were admitted in colleges, high schools and universities by entrance examination. This quickly led to a ranking of the schools. Entrance examinations were held in successive waves, the first wave being for the best institutions. After the publication of their results, it was the turn of the next wave. The competition became increasingly hard to access the best schools.
In 1972 the military government decided to restore equal opportunity: he decided that pupils would go to the school of their area. Today, most schools operate on this principle of equality between them.
Many Koreans felt that this move reduced the teaching quality. They reacted in two ways: firstly, by moving so that their children could be enrolled in what they still regarded as the best schools; secondly, by giving them extra lessons on private courses that became parallel schools.
Today, 84% of Koreans attend universities. Universities select students with an entrance examination. The entire Korean school system is focused on those entrance exams, even for children who have no desire to attend the university.
To be recruited by one of the best universities has important consequences. It ensures the highest social positions, especially since there is solidarity between the alumni from the same university.
The consequences of this competition for access to the best university are determining.
— First, the Koreans have two days of classes, the first in ordinary schools as we know them, then they move at about 6 pm to parallel private courses. The Korean government recently banned courses after midnight.
To get an idea of what it represents in the life of teenagers, I'll take the example of a boarding school of Wonju because I have its precise timetable. As students are boarding, they do not attend alternative school. The school provides them with both regular education and extra education.
The students get up at 5:50. Their classes begin at 7:20 and last until 12:30; that’s nearly 5 hours. In the afternoon, they resume at 13:20 until 16:10, almost 3 hours. In the evening, it starts again at 19:00 and lasts until midnight. School days long almost 13 hours.
On Sundays and holidays, students get up at 8:30 and again they study until midnight. One Sunday a month is free and students are allowed to visit their families.
— This inhuman effort affects health. A teenager needs at least nine hours of sleep. In Western countries, we get alarmed at the reduction of sleep time due to the misuse of new technologies, which produces fatigue, problems of attention, sometimes depression. Yet it is far from Korea where the institution itself deprives young people of sleeping time – less than six hours per night! This lack of sleep is harmful to learning abilities.
This does not preclude teachers considering that they don’t have time to help their struggling students: "If a student is late in more than one subject, it is extremely difficult to do something for considerable lack of time."
A teacher writes to me that there is usually no homework after parallel school, in reason of the "lack of time for that." But it still happens sometimes, "to see what they can do."
— The cost of alternative education is enormous. In Seoul, prices range from 6 000 to 20 000 euros per year but can reach 50 000 euros for the most expensive. This is often half the family budget.
— The family life revolves around the education system. As an additional course is not enough, you often run from a private school to another. The logistics must be provided by the mother, so much so that when a child is in the last year of secondary school, his family has to live all year round as if it were at war, the mother being involved from early in the morning until late at night.
— Many families are separated: the father stays in Korea and work to finance, the mother and her child (sometimes children, the birth rate being very low) go abroad. This formula is not more expensive than pursuing studies in Korea.
— The teaching practices in ordinary schools are determined by the parallel education. Teachers verify that students have understood what they have learned before in the parallel schools and explain only what has not been well understood. Students who do not attend private courses are dropped: "We do not have time to solve their problems." Additional courses are provided for those who cannot afford to follow the formal education but they are ineffective and rather considered as alibis.
— This system ensures the social reproduction because the children of wealthy families have the best private courses and enter the best universities. Student achievement is directly correlated to the wealth of the family.
— Psychologically, the frantic competition is demeaning. Despite all their efforts, despite the sacrifice of their lives, children and adolescents are not up to the expectations placed in them. The effects are devastating and can lead to suicide, even of children in primary school.
— The rejection of this system leads to delinquency in the classroom and outside the classroom.
— The teachers in ordinary schools don’t feel much better than their students. For most of them, the goal is to help their students, to make them think, to humanize them. A teacher writes to me that the important thing is to "take pleasure with sciences rather than to learn sciences". But the society only asks them to rank the students and they suffer from this conflict between what they would like do and what they have to do.
The population has no confidence in public education.
After reading the PISA reports, I thought the Korean education system was performing well. But if we consider the cost (half of household income toppling the expenditures by the State) and the time spent by the pupils (about three times more than in France), this system is inefficient. After having sacrificed their lives, fifteen years old Koreans are between nine months and two years ahead of the French pupils of the same age, according to the discipline evaluated — and they have no advantage over the Finns who spend even less time in their studies than the French.
After the holy grail of university entrance, young Koreans relax completely. They do everything to catch up in other areas: sports, leisure, travel, friendship and love... As a result, they are less involved in their professional training. They indulge and are difficult to motivate.
Education is therefore a hypersensitive issue in Korea. Unanimity exists on the need to change this system but opinions diverge and even openly opposed to what should be done.
A primary school teacher writes me that attempts to reform the system from the bottom while the ultimate goal is still the success in entrance examinations to university are doomed. He thinks the reforms will be ineffective as long as the ultimate goal remains the same. I believe he's right.
