7.25.2005

Intensives

Two times a year Korean schools close for a brief vacation, once in the summer and again in winter. This is similar to the North American style with the exception that the Korean breaks are much shorter and the breaks are equal in length. During the school year students of all ages are expected to not only attend school and perform well, but also to attend numerous 학원 or hakwons (academies' or 'institutes' depending on which Korean is talking). These academies range from piano to math, Chinese to English, Tae kwon-do to ballet and include stranger incarnations such as the famous Lego Academy. Whatever the subject, most students are enrolled in a number of differing academies and from first grade onward their lives are dictated by what form of schooling is next.

A typical day for an elementary student may be as follows:

8am-2pm Elementary school
2:30pm-4pm English Academy
4:30pm-5:30pm Piano Academy
6pm-7pm Math Academy
7:30pm-8:30pm Chinese Academy

This is by no means an exaggeration and in fact may be quite less than what many students endure. Even still, most students appear to be well adjusted and, as I'm sure most know, well ahead intellectually of their western counterparts. Nevertheless, they certainly look forward to those two times of year when school lets out and they are free to roam the streets as children do and play in the sun and snow...

Hahaha. If only that were the case. School vacation in Korea doesn't equate to children running around entertaining themselves. When schools close their doors for summer and winter students find unexpected extra time on their hands. And what do sensible people do with extra time? STUDY!!

Which brings me to my point. I teach at one of the aforementioned academies, obviously of the English variety, and we've just opened our 'Summer Intensive Session'. This is the time for all of those children who've just been released from the clutches of their elementary and middle schools to spend five days a week 'intensively' studying English. Some vacation.

Truthfully, it is not the children that I really feel sorry for in this whole process. Sure, they are deprived of their free time and forced to spend the sunny and snowy seasons indoors cramming English into their brains, but who really gets the short end of the stick? Me!

Because of this custom of utilizing every second of a child's life to further their education I'm forced to wake up early (9am) each day for a month and drag myself across town to cover the extra classes. I know, it's torturous. Would it really be such a bad thing to let these children spend two months of the year outside of a classroom? And more importantly, let me resume my usual wake time of eleven-thirty.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't tell me that they also have homework!

Also: when do they eat?!