Wednesday, October 22, 2008

School News Update

1) Over a month ago, I did a student interview with the Internet Club. The results are now available online at Youngil High School's webpage. Brush up on your Hangeul first, though.

2) With more data now available, this week's lesson plan depends for its success on the willingness of the students to practice their English. In some classes, it's gone exceedingly well, but in some classes, like sixth period today, it was such a shambles I gave up on it and played Pictionary for a while. City names: Sole, liver pool, new yolk ...

3) Tomorrow is Youngil Marathon Day: we meet at World Cup Stadium Park in Sangam at 9 AM. Students will run (or walk) a 5.4 km course in the park beside the stadium, which was built atop an old landfill--that's newspeak for city dump. Anyway, the whole thing can't last more than two hours, after which we're done for the day. Alas, it looks like rain here in Seoul.

4) A story at Dong-A Ilbo reports on a survey of attitudes toward the Korean educational system:
Nearly half of parents age 30 or over (48.3 percent) want to send their children overseas to study. A third of parents said they want to nurture their children into global talents and a quarter said they do not trust the Korean education system.
The majority 79.8 percent of households said they are burdened by education cost, higher than 73.4 percent in 2000 and 77.4 percent in 2004.

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