Kiwi Kids are Lazy
There are must be hundreds of
kiwi parents who regularly lament how lazy their teenage kids are, well they
may have a point. Last year I traveled
to Korea and met with a group Korean high school students. I spent the day at their school and they
showed me around with huge enthusiasm.
They talked about their studies and their aspirations for the
future. Youngil High school was alive with
enthusiastic engaged learners and teachers.
The interesting thing was it a
beautiful sunny day, 36 degrees outside and in the middle of the school
holidays. Of a school of approximately 2000
boys over 1500 of them were attending voluntary ‘catch up classes’ during the
summer break.
They went on to describe, in
perfect English, a typical school day.
The boys I was talking to got up around 6:30AM, had breakfast then left
the apartment around 7:30AM to get to school for an 8:30AM start. After a full day of instruction they spent
another 2 hours at school taking extra classes. They arrived home around
6:30PM, some students had dinner and then had 2 hours with a private tutor,
others spent time with the tutor first and then had dinner. After that they spent 2 -3 hours doing their
home work. Most nights the boys I spoke
to got to bed around mid night. This
pattern wasn’t just around exam time it was a typical day repeated 5 days a
week for the whole school year.
I was fortunate to be invited
back to one student’s home for dinner and his farther confirmed the story and
if it had not been for my visit he would have had tuition that night. Shin talked about the importance of education
and getting into one of the top universities.
This would lead to better job prospects once he graduated. It was extremely important to the family that
their son do well and achieve the best he could, not only for him but because
it reflected well on the family.
I described the Korean students
day to a couple of secondary school boys during the summer break back in New
Zealand. They scoffed and the word “nerd”
was used more than once. “When do they
fit in sports or time with their mates?” they asked. It didn’t even occur to me to ask that
question when I met with the boys in Korea.
When I asked the Kiwi lads what
other languages they were learning they sheepishly replied none, the boys back
in Korea spoke Korean, fluent English and were learning at least one other
language.
So are we selling our kids short
by not emphasising the importance of education? There is plenty in the media
about ‘knowledge economies’ and ‘life-long learners’ but as a nation do we
really believe it? The National
Curriculum Standards have gone some way to refocusing primary schools on the
importance of academic learning but is our holistic approach to learning really
the best thing for our kids?
