Monday, March 1, 2010

Seoul Schools "Fight" to Fill Classrooms

So in America, we say that 30 in a class is far far too big. Private schools biggest selling point is that they have tiny classes, usually hovering around 12 students per class.  The biggest complaint that I hear from public school teachers in Korea is how impossible it is to teach effectively to the 30+ students we usually have in a class. TEFL and EPIK training alike focuses on activities geared at far smaller numbers.

The JoongAng Daily seems to feel that the new 29 average in Seoul is too small--they actually made a favorable reference to the classes of 1982 that averaged 62 students per class. Seriously?!

~shakes head~

3 comments:

Luis said...

I want to see how they would fit 60 kids in one of my classrooms.. on second thought, I don't even want to think about it... but I would definitely be walking around with a Soju or worse IV stuck in my arm.

Alex said...

Agreed, and as I've said ad nauseum in other blog posts about education reform, the way to cut down on hagwon dependency/growth is to invest in public schools, particularly in smaller class sizes. The max size in my hagwon classes was 10 last year. Parents pay for teacher-student attention and interaction.

Josh said...

oh i totally think that 1-2k students per closet-sized windowless classroom is even better than 60! ~tongue firmly in cheek~