It would be interesting to know what happens to these students once they actually get to Havard/Yale/Princeton. Do they find themselves able to cope in an environment where they have to learn on their own, without anybody to hold their hand? Do they run amok once they get out of that strictly controlled environment, and turn into drunken party animals? Do they become disillusioned when they realize that everyone around them is getting by just fine by putting in one tenth the effort? Or do they keep up the habit of insanely hard work, shoot to the head of their classes and go on to have stellar careers?
No doubt it's some combination of all of the above, but it'd be nice to know.
Having known graduates of both Daewon and KMLA at several elite colleges, I can say that their performance is comparable to most of the other students at their respective colleges. There are those who continue in their study habits and graduate at the top of the class, those that relax a little to explore their options and enjoy more of their college experience, and those that put more emphasis on socializing than studying. There's no real stereotype of a typical graduate from one of these schools, other than being smart, Korean, and communicating in fluent English. Most of them seem to be happy to be going to college in the U.S.
The craziest thing about most of this is that it takes just as much (if not more) effort for kids in high school to get to one of the top 3 Korean colleges (Seoul, Yonsei, Korea). In fact, both KMLA and Daewon also have a track for students who want to attend Korean universities that is just as intense.
It's hard to say whether this is the best way for a person to spend their high school years, but in places like Korea and Japan, this is the way that any college-bound student spends their youth. Everybody who wants to go to college either attends a college prep school or a private prep program from about middle school, because that's the way it has always been.
It depends on the person. I know too many (see long rant of a comment on this same topic) who've gone the route of study study study study study go to ivy. One's committed suicide. Some work themselves as usual..until they get burnt out. Others figure out this wasn't what they wanted to do and they were doing it just to make their parents happy, and then go study something else that interested them.
I actually haven't heard of very many that go on to have stellar careers. Unless you define "stellar" to be something that is stellar to them...then some of them do.
I worked with Koreans for a big project for a device manufactured by one of the big Koreans OEMs, where my company was providing some of the applications.
it was a problematic project, as the Korean wa having lots of bugs. The Korean guys worked everyday from 9:30 am, to 3:00 am! I am not making this up. And saturday, was only a half aday (8hrs) work.
These guys were not getting enough sleep, and you would see often colapsed and taking naps in front of their computers.
They were like walking zombies.
This was a important project, and I guess it is a cultural thing to work so much. Needless to say that their long hours were very counterproductive. They would fix something in the morning, and break something at night.
I absolutely do not understand why parents make their kids go through this torture. Thankfully I have very open minded Korean parents and grew up in the US, but right now I am in such a better position than half my parents' friends kids that it's not funny. I slacked off, did just the bare minimum until the subject interested me, I go to parties, I go to events, I have fun. I don't study until 5 in the morning unless it's a final I'm screwed for, or if I procrastinated way too much. In fact, if I ever stay up that late it's almost always because I've been spending too much time talking to the people on the opposite side of Earth on IRC while idly doing work or playing a game.
And well, I'm going to a better university than most of them, studying what I want to, earning well more than pocket change doing some coding work, and still having fun (and yes, a relationship! with premarital sex!). What did they do in the same 10 years? Study their asses off until they get burnt out constantly, and then go to some university studying what their parents wanted (half the time) or something socially acceptable (the rest of the time) where they still study their asses off, and then do the SAME thing at whatever job they get post-graduation.
I'm not being entirely fair here, but I'm not that far off. :\ It's quite depressing.
Asians' bizarre thing for long hours was a big factor in race riots in the American west in the 19th century. Several times in a few cities the whites torched businesses employing asians and tore asians from their homes and marched them to the docks. People didn't want to compete with that shit.
As Bush has shown very clearly, Ivy League skills have nothing to do with intelligence or even studying.
I think as long as asian universities and school focus on work so much and completely omit inter-personal skills, they will fail to to anything other than produce very smart people with no life.
You guys get show and tell sessions throughout school, don't you? In all of school until university I gave a grand total of 1 presentation to my peers. Then one more at university.
I don't agree with the methods and values described in the article, but these kids deserve a lot of respect for being able to master the English writing requirements. They are not native English speakers and are growing up in Korean society.
I disagree. Korean society idolizes the English language to the point that it's usually taught as a main secondary language starting from elementary school, and you pretty much can't get into any half decent Korean university if your English sucks. Of course, if you don't get into a nice university, you don't get a nice job because no big company paying the big bucks wants to hire you.
It's like the equivalent of saying "if you don't know English AND Spanish/French you're not getting into any university but the local shitty state/community college, which means low paying jobs for you!" in the US. And the society overall is so obsessed with English that they're using it as the main language in a lot of places (works great when half the audience doesn't know the language well, right?). I heard a broadcast of one commencement speech at some Korean university where some guy just talked in this horrible broken English that even I couldn't understand beyond a word or two (and I'm a native speaker and can usually understand people with heavy accents). Way to go! Isn't the point of a language to um, like, communicate? Not to alienate your non-English speaking but all fluent-in-Korean audience for the sake of attempting to look trendy by speaking English (but making a fool of yourself in the process..).
Of course, unless they get a job requiring English, or move to an English-speaking country, most people forget all they learned about English.
To top that off, given that I'm Korean, I get to deal with these (mostly) twats with no lives with a horrible command of English waay too often. Too many times I've been asked by friends of my mom who want me to tutor their poor kid cause I was in gifted programs since forever and have spectacular SAT verbal/writing scores. And I don't see anyone making any comments like yours about my excellent command of the Korean language (complete with slang) despite having been born and raised in the US. Or conversational French and Spanish. And Java. And Ruby. And C++. :p I respect any and all polyglots, regardless of where they were raised and what they know. But I just really felt the need to point out a couple of things.
Honestly, I should quit my job and give up coding to go teach English to the kids of the rich overseas. A couple hundred bucks an hour? Sheeeeesh. I already had to teach English to a couple of my cousins that came over last summer...the older one was considered to be one of the best English speakers in her expensive and elite private middle school but I honestly couldn't call it anything more than broken English at best.
Not everyone is artistic. There is a market for people to come in to work, do something moderately intelligent for 8 hours, and then go home. I think this sort of school system prepares people for this sort of job pretty well. (I went to school in Japan for a year. I would much rather send my kids to school there than a random school in the US.)
Besides, creativity can't be taught. So you might as well focus on teaching things that can be taught :) Eventually the creative people will realize that they should do something creative.
That said, a 15 hour school day is definitely excessive. You can pretend to learn for 15 hours a day, but you can't actually do it. I think 8 hours a day is the maximum amount of time you can focus on something that is not "interesting", hence the 8 hour workday that most people keep.
I wonder what would happen if instead of a steady 8 hour workday or school day it was broken down into four 2 hour periods. I tend to work better that way personally.
But if you mean more separation than that... it might be interesting, but most people don't want to commute 4 times a day.
Personally, I usually work for 6 hours, then I watch TV, relax, take a nap, etc. and then do some more work before really going to sleep. Very relaxing and productive. (Working at home is nice.)
Insane. Education is really, really, really important, but there's more to life than studying. Much more. Besides, the value of Ivy-League schools is overrated.
I doubt you will find many people that disagree there is more to live.
However, this is a short term sacrifice to achieve a goal. Many people would laugh at someone wanting to start a company on the side while working full time too. So let's not be too judgmental of their ambition.
But what's the goal? Getting into Harvard, Princeton, etc.? Because once they actually get in and reach their goal, they'll notice it's yet a long, long road to go.
No doubt it's some combination of all of the above, but it'd be nice to know.