Private Education in South Korea and the Way TUDA Should Go

tuda (64)in #education • 6 years ago (edited)

Hi Steemians,

We are Team TUDA!

While operating the current TUDA platform, founded in August 2016, our team came to know how our tutors’ platform should evolve and be developed from lessons learned in the South Korean private market. We would love to share our thoughts learned from the private education market in South Korea.

Followed by a research by Kim, S. and Lee J. H. (2010)¹, private tutoring in South Korea is quite pervasive. The desire to enter elite universities in a very hierarchical, higher education system and a heavily regulated and equalized secondary school system has created an enormous demand for supplementary private tutoring. The result of the keen competition for better education in S. Korea is the emergence of a very lucrative private after-school tutoring academy and private tutor market. To win against the competition, the students’ families have begun to pool their resources, under the leadership of a nominated representative, described as the “Pig Mom”. “Pig Mom” refers to the representative mother of the students, who controls the communication between the instructor, the private institute, and the school. In a way, it is similar to the way piglets are dragged around by their mother. It is a localized word that indicates the distorted education in South Korea.

"Pig Mom" in South Korea

Here is a quick clip on the "Pig Mom" in Korean:

“Pig Mom” in an South Korean family can be compared with the “Tiger Mom” in a Chinese family. Tiger parenting (老虎妈妈, "tiger mother" or "tiger mom") is a term which refers to the strict or demanding parents who push and pressure their children to be successful academically by attaining high levels of scholastic and academic achievement. Yale law professor Amy Chua coined the term "Tiger Mom" in her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Tiger Parenting, "Tiger Mom"

As a result of this fierce competition, South Korea’s students have been outperforming their global peers in tests conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in recent years². A few years ago, former US president Obama praised the South Korean emphasis on education³. When former president Obama launched the campaign to improve the performance of American students in STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), he cited the examples of Shanghai and South Korea.

Research has found that the attitudes and strong beliefs of Asian parents make an important contribution to their children’s academic success (Hsin, A., & Xie, Y., 2014)⁴. Fu, A. S., & Markus, H. R. (2014) from Stanford University⁵ say Asian children find a motivation to succeed in parental expectations.

While South Korean students are excelling in science and mathematics, the rote way the subjects are being taught is not kindling interest within the students. South Korea’s education is often described as very stressful, authoritarian, brutally competitive, and meritocratic. The “Pig Mom” or “Tiger Mom”-style parenting methods, which heavily forces their child to study, will restrict the children's ability to discover their individual talents and passions, thus will result in making the child lose a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and purpose.

Is a child only negatively affected by harsh and controlling parents? It may not be true.

Traditional Asian families tend to be culturally collectivistic, emphasizing interdependence, conformity, emotional self-control, and humility. These Asian cultural values produce profoundly ingrained family values, such as a strong sense of obligation and orientation to the family. In the Western perspective, these “Tiger Mom” or “Pig Mom” parenting can be weird. However, it is likely that incorrectly fitting one culture into another's framework and the failure to capture the critical differences in core family values and practices has led to the complex and even paradoxical findings concerning Asian families in parenting research⁶.

Specifically, authoritative parenting (“Tiger Mom” or “Pig Mom” style) establishes firm and clear rules but employs inductive reasoning and allows autonomy, active exploration, and risk-taking, yielding positive youth outcomes (Rubin & Chung, 2013)⁷. It also helps to build close parent-child relationships and reduce parent-child conflict, and it has been shown to be the most beneficial in all domains of youth outcomes concerning academic performance, and externalizing behaviors (Park et al., 2010)⁸.

To initially conclude, can we say that the current South Korean education model is fine? While other countries may envy South Korea’s positions in the student performance league tables and their close parent-child relationships, this focus on hard work and harsh control probably can’t be replicated elsewhere, and given the societal collateral damage, probably wouldn’t want to.

In our last two years of experience of operating the TUDA platform in the private education market in South Korea, we found the South Korean private education system has its own strengths in terms of students’ academic performance. The idea that success through education is most important is a great motivator for harsh controlling parenting. However, a system driven by “Pig Mom” or “Tiger Mom” and a very lucrative private education is unsustainable over the long run, especially given the physical and psychological costs that students are forced to bear⁹.

While we can't say whether this South Korean type of parenting and educational style is right or wrong, what we do think at TUDA is that there is a need for a better communication and collaboration mechanism among teachers, students, as well as parents. As such, we are building an educational system that is affordable, accessible, beneficial, democratic, and equitable to all involved.

Team TUDA will continue looking at various methods of education throughout the world. If there are any inaccuracies in our articles, please us know. We love looking at various teaching methods, various philosophies, and create a database that everyone can access.

Team TUDA

References:
¹ Kim, S., & Lee, J. H. (2010). Private tutoring and demand for education in South Korea. Economic development and cultural change, 58(2), 259-296.
² https://theconversation.com/south-korean-education-ranks-high-but-its-the-kids-who-pay-34430
³ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/president-obama-praises-south-korea-for-paying-teachers-as-much-as-doctors-10398802.html
⁴ Hsin, A., & Xie, Y. (2014). Explaining Asian Americans’ academic advantage over whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8416-8421.
⁵ Fu, A. S., & Markus, H. R. (2014). My mother and me: Why tiger mothers motivate Asian Americans but not European Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(6), 739-749.
⁶ Rubin, K. H., & Chung, O. B. (2013). Parenting beliefs, behaviors, and parent-child relations: A cross-cultural perspective. Psychology Press.
⁷ Choi, Y., Kim, Y. S., Kim, S. Y., & Park, I. J. (2013). Is Asian American parenting controlling and harsh? Empirical testing of relationships between Korean American and Western parenting measures. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 4(1), 19.
⁸ Park, Y. S., Kim, B. S., Chiang, J., & Ju, C. M. (2010). Acculturation, enculturation, parental adherence to Asian cultural values, parenting styles, and family conflict among Asian American college students. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 1(1), 67.
⁹ https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/opinion/sunday/south-koreas-education-system-hurts-students.html