I wanted to bring the talk of the fake $15 minimum wage policy to start our talk about education. Baltimore has one of the most global corporate education K-university in the nation with the worst in the nation K-12 education system. This happens under neo-conservatism----Baltimore is completely privatizing the entire K-12 system killing public teachers, public structures in our schools, tying global corporate non-profits in this march towards a global neo-liberal system as exists in Asia.
Remember, Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are far-right posing progressive so when they push $15 an hour in US International Economic Zones due to operate as they do overseas---they KNOW where these policies lead.
'the Fight for $15 minimum-wage campaign',
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TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum Wage
The most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
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What does $15 an hour have to do with our teachers? If the goal of global corporate campus is to have US citizens living, eating, schooled, working on that campus----and if that global campus is operating the same as an International Economic Zone in Asia---that school on campus will be staffed with an education format tied to global online education lessons written for that specific industry. If you are living on the global UnderArmour campus you will no doubt be learning the garment/sports equipment trade and manufacturing. K-12 will be vocationally structured for students to head to those factories. This means as well there is no need for 7-12 grades as it does not take much knowledge to work in garment industry or dye factories. This is why candidates for Mayor of Baltimore like Warnock and Guterriez are touting all the ties to corporations and apprenticeships at 6th grade---
THEY ARE FAR-RIGHT POLITICIANS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS IN BALTIMORE AS ARE ALL THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Baltimore has outsourced teaching jobs for over a decade as the entire public school structure was dismantled. Teachers and students were deemed FAILING when it was the Baltimore City Hall and School Board controlled by the State of Maryland keeping all funding from reaching our public schools that are failures. That was Nancy Grasmick-----and Baltimore's mayors these few decades.
Baltimore has a high percentage of foreign teachers because of this stat below-----a US teacher would receive $60,000 a year and these immigrant teachers are being paid what is a poverty wage with poverty at $30,000 (Living Wage). So, the city has forced Baltimore's wages down in every industry by fleecing our immigrant community---who the US Constitution says-----IF HIRED BY A US BUSINESS WILL BE PAID THE SAME AS ALL US WORKERS. Always ignoring the US Constitution and Rule of Law.
As the percentage of Teach for America in Baltimore passes the percentage of public school teacher staff -----the dismantling of wage structures-----the idea of having a career-----the students having a moving flow of people through all their school experience rather than people they know and with whom they relate.
Below you see to where a teacher's salary will go if Trans Pacific Trade Pact and International Economic Zone policies are installed as in Baltimore-------even those immigrant teachers earning much better wages than in their own nations will now fall right back to what is made in China et al and will take US teachers as well. $160 a month-----READY OR NOT!
'Teachers from Yilan had posted a letter online that said educators who have worked for 20 years make just over $320 per month, and new teachers make $160 — “even more pathetic,” according to the letter'.
Below see what immigrant teachers in the US earn today vs what they earn back in their own nations-----
South-east Asia Center Preschool Teacher Salary
South-east Asia Center Preschool Teacher average salary is $28,000,
Preschool TeacherSouth-east Asia Center$28,000Chicago, IL, 6060106/13/2005
You can see they are attaching the pension scheme used in the US in lieu of wages with the same intent of using these funds as fodder and then say ---sorry, no more pensions
If you understand that the current Race to the Top and corporate charter system policy was exactly how all these Asian International Economic Zone education structures were installed----you know global pols are simply bringing home what they built overseas
Asia Pacific
Teachers’ Strikes Spread Across Northeast China
By EDWARD WONGDEC. 1, 2014
BEIJING — Strikes by thousands of teachers frustrated by low salaries and mandatory payments to pension plans have spread across cities in northeast China, state news media reported on Monday.
The strikes began last week and have spread to a half-dozen cities or counties near Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, where economic growth has long been slower than elsewhere in China. Classes in some primary and high schools in Heilongjiang have been suspended, the reports said.
Teachers are asking for raises and for the government to end required payments to a pension plan. China National Radio reported that one teacher was making less than $400 a month after working for 25 years.
A one-minute video posted online showed a group of banner-waving peoplein the snow in front of the county government offices in Yilan. “Give me back my salary, give me back my dignity,” the people shouted in unison. A report by Global Times, a state-run newspaper, said teachers in Yilan County held up a banner that said: “We are 4,000 Yilan teachers. Return my withheld money!”
In China, teaching has long been a profession with relatively low pay. Teachers from Yilan had posted a letter online that said educators who have worked for 20 years make just over $320 per month, and new teachers make $160 — “even more pathetic,” according to the letter.
The teachers acknowledged in their letter that the strike had caused hardships for students. “It hurts us that kids are affected because of this,” they wrote. “We’re profoundly sorry. Whatever we owe the kids, we’ll make up for in the future by being available all the time.”
There have been more reports in recent years of strikes in China by people in low-paid occupations. The labor pool of younger workers is getting smaller, and the growth rate of the Chinese economy has been slowing. Salary increases for lower- and middle-class workers have lagged behind inflation in many regions.
The grievances over the teachers’ pension plan have arisen because of a project started in 2004 by Heilongjiang Province, and supported by the central government, that requires government workers, including teachers, to contribute part of their salaries to a centralized provincial pension payment plan for all citizens. Previously, government workers were exempt from making payments.
Another letter posted online by teachers in the city of Shuangcheng, west of Harbin, said they should not be forced to contribute to the pension plan unless the policy is enacted nationally. Officials in Shuangcheng would not discuss the strike and several schools in the city said they were operating normally.
The protests around Heilongjiang began after teachers in the city of Zhaodong, in the same province, took to the streets in mid-November to demand higher salaries. The local government approved an average increase of $125 a month and promised to investigate working conditions, state news media reported. The teachers in Zhaodong then went back to work.
Strikes by teachers have taken place recently in other parts of China. Teachers at one junior high school in Guangdong Province protested in late October when the government began paying them about $260 a month after having promised a monthly salary of $800, according to the People’s Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper. A similar walkout occurred in March at a kindergarten in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong.
In early September, teachers at a high school in the city of Xiaogan, in Hubei Province, went on strike over what they called the government’s refusal to give them the proper status in the public employment system. The status helps determine details of their pension plans.
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This is how you create these same wage inequity structures in education as US corporate executives vs everyone else.
'As such, the vast majority of teenagers here do a double shift at school: They attend normal classes by day but go to hagwons for after-hours study'.
In education-crazy South Korea, top teachers become multimillionaires
Cha Kil-yong is a popular online math tutor in South Korea. Cha often dresses up for his program to engage students' attention. (Shin Woong-jae/for The Washington Post)
By Anna Fifield December 30, 2014 SEOUL —
Clasping his headphones and closing his eyes as he sang into the studio microphone while performing a peppy duet with one of South Korea’s hottest actresses, spiky-haired Cha Kil-yong looked every bit the K-pop star.
But Cha is not a singer or actor. No, he’s a unique kind of South Korean celebrity: a teaching star.
And the song he was singing with Clara, a Korean mega celebrity, in a music video that wouldn’t be out of place on MTV? It was called “SAT jackpot!”
In this education-obsessed country, Cha is a top-ranked math teacher. But he doesn’t teach in a school. He runs an online “hagwon” — or cram school — called SevenEdu that focuses entirely on preparing students to take the college entrance exam in mathematics.
Here, teaching pays: Cha said he earned a cool $8 million last year.
Cha keeps many masks and props in his SevenEdu filming studio. (Shin Woong-jae/for The Washington Post)“I’m madly in love with math,” said Cha, looking the height of trendiness in his crimson shirt and pants and tweed jacket, in his office in Gangnam — a wealthy part of Seoul famous for its conspicuous consumption and featured in the song “Gangnam Style.”
It’s hard to exaggerate the premium South Korea places on education. This is a society in which you have to get into the right kindergarten, so that you can get into the right elementary school, then into the right middle school and high school, and finally into the right college. Which, of course, gets you the right job and scores you the right spouse.
There’s even a phrase to describe the Korean version of a helicopter mother: “chima baram” — literally “skirt wind,” to describe the swish as a mother rushes into the classroom to demand a front-row seat for her child or to question grades.
Many Korean families split and live on opposite sides of the world in pursuit of a better education: The mother and children live in the United States or some other English-speaking country, the better to secure entry to a prestigious university (preferably Harvard). The “goose father” continues working in South Korea, flying in to visit when he can.
All of this combines to make South Korea’s equivalent of the SAT the most important event in a young person’s life.
As such, the vast majority of teenagers here do a double shift at school: They attend normal classes by day but go to hagwons for after-hours study. Increasingly, online hagwons are replacing traditional brick-and-mortar cram schools. The hagwons have become a $20 billion industry.
This devotion to studying is credited with helping South Korea consistently rank at the top of the developed world in reading, math and science, although the latest rankings from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also show that Korean students come last when asked whether they are happy at school. South Korea also has the highest suicide rate in the developed world, which many suggest is related to a high-stress focus on education.
Some politicians and educators are questioning whether things have gotten out of hand. But even parents opposed to this punishing system find it difficult to opt out — their children complain that they can’t keep up if they don’t go to a hagwon.
That’s good news for instructors like Cha, who started teaching at a hagwon to pay his way through his PhD program.
About 300,000 students take his online class at any given time, paying $39 for a 20-hour course (traditional cram schools charge as much as $600 for a course). He teaches them tricks for taking the timed exams, including shortcuts that students can take to solve a problem faster.
Asked what makes him stand out, Cha said: “Suppose you give the same ingredients to 100 different chefs. They would make different dishes even though they’re working with the same ingredients. It’s the same with a math class. Even though it’s all math and all in Korean, you can use different ingredients to come up with different results.”
His studio is set up with a green chalkboard and desks, and behind the camera are piles of props — including hippo and Batman masks and a gold sequined jacket.
“You’re not only teaching a subject, you also have to be a multitalented entertainer,” said Cha, declining to give his age and offering only that he’d been working for 20 years.
On SAT day, he visits schools to offer encouragement to test takers. He also does television ads, endorsing products such as a red ginseng drink meant to boost brain power.
Kwon Kyu-ho, a top-ranked literature teacher, also appears with K-pop stars and has a lucrative side business in celebrity endorsements, lending his name to a chair meant to help people study better.
Maintaining his position doesn’t require just good lessons. Kwon, 33, also gets regular facials and works out, and he said some teachers even have stylists..
“I always wanted to be a teacher, but I feel that regular school teaching has its limits. There is a certain way you have to teach,” said Kwon, whose lessons appear on the sites Etoos and VitaEdu. “And, of course, I’m making a lot more money this way.”
He wouldn’t disclose how much he earned, only that it was “several millions” of dollars a year. The secret of his success, Kwon said, was finding the parts of tests that make most students stumble. He focuses lessons on those problem areas.
This style of education has its upsides, he said.
“I think one of the benefits of private education is that teachers compete with each other and try to develop higher quality content,” he said. “We have money. We can invest in ways that normal schoolteachers can not.”
As President Park Geun-hye promotes a “creative economy” as the key to taking South Korea to the next level in its development, many analysts say the country would do well to take a more creative approach to education.
Lee Ju-ho, who was minister of education until last year, is among them.
“All this late-night study could lead to problems in enhancing their other skills, like character, creativity and critical thinking,” he said. “Hagwon is all about rote learning and memorization.”
Lee said all the problems stem from the college admissions procedures, which have been slow in looking beyond test scores to other criteria such as extracurricular activities and personal essays, as is common in many Western countries.
“We really need to change,” said Lee, who is now a professor at the Korea Development Institute’s School of Public Policy and Management.
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If you read international public policy you have read the term RE-EDUCATION being used to describe the goal of Clinton neo-liberalism in the US. Remember, Stalin and Mao had their version of RE-EDUCATION camps where anyone who did not fall into line and become STANDARDIZED would be sent away until that person fell into line. This is how you force a thousand years of Asian tradition out and place US industrial societal values in. Well, that is what bringing this Asian global corporate neo-liberalism back to the US as Race to the Top and Common Core with all the corporate online structures has as a goal----TO HOMOGENIZE AND RE-EDUCATE the American people away from all that silly Democratic Rule of Law US Constitution WE THE PEOPLE WITH RIGHTS AS CITIZENS Western values of choice, freedom, individual pursuits-----
AND GET WITH THE GLOBAL CORPORATE PLANTATION ROUTINE OF WORK, EAT, SCHOOL, LIVE WHERE YOU WORK AND 15-18 HOURS OF DOING THAT.
Free time? Vacations? Weekends? Not in a US International Economic Zone with global corporate campuses and FOXCONN factories.
All of this Teach for America and bringing immigrant teachers from overseas is to inject this social norm----to get rid of citizens wanting to educate about being a citizen-----about wanting all that diversity in our classrooms----of inspiring a love of life-long learning -----and just get these students ready to work
Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher Hardcover – August 5, 2014
by Garret Keizer (Author)
In this powerful, eloquent story of his return to the classroom, a former teacher offers a rousing defense of his beleaguered vocation
Perhaps no profession is so constantly discussed, regulated, and maligned by non-practitioners as teaching. The voices of the teachers themselves are conspicuously missing. Defying this trend, teacher and writer Garret Keizer takes us to school―literally―in this arresting account of his return to the same rural Vermont high school where he taught fourteen years ago.
Much has changed since then―a former student is his principal, standardized testing is the reigning god, and smoking in the boys' room has been supplanted by texting in the boys' room. More familiar are the effects of poverty, the exuberance of youth, and the staggering workload that technology has done as much to increase as to lighten. Telling the story of Keizer's year in the classroom, Getting Schooled takes us everywhere a teacher might go: from field trips to school plays to town meetings, from a kid's eureka moment to a parent's dark night of the soul.
At once fiercely critical and deeply contemplative, Keizer exposes the obstacles that teachers face daily―and along the way takes aim at some cherished cant: that public education is doomed, that the heroic teacher is the cure for all that ails education, that educational reform can serve as a cheap substitute for societal reformation.
Angry, humorous, and always hopeful, Getting Schooled is as good an argument as we are likely to hear for a substantive reassessment of our schools and those who struggle in them.
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Baltimore is filling with non-profits geared to bring this Asian overseas of hyper-competition and privatized education businesses to the US. All after-school and pre-K funding that could augment and much needed public school and its resources and funding are being sent yet again to tons of education non-profits with no oversight and accountability and again-----the funds will simply move to create these education businesses. These will look like small businesses but be folded into the global corporate education businesses brought from overseas.
There are plenty of good people wanting to help in our neglected school system. We need them to understand it is better to build these structures into our public schools -----the after-school programs in our public schools-----the pre-K in our public schools-----and then we can augment with local education non-profits once we have stabilized our schools.
Every Baltimore Development Corporation candidate for Mayor of Baltimore is pushing all these global corporate neo-liberal education policies.
The After-School Institute is a Baltimore-based capacity-building organization.
Our mission is to provide after-school programs with the training and support they need to offer children and youth quality after-school and out-of-school opportunities.
FAQs
Q. How do I join The After-School Institute and the After-School Network?
A. Please fill out and submit your contact information online at Becoming a Member. You can also come to a Network Meeting and meet us there!
Q. Are Network Meetings open to non-members?
A. Yes. We encourage the participation of all those interested, members or non-members. Network Meetings are FREE for all.
Q. How do I start or expand an after-school program?
A. There are a variety of steps you can take to get your program off the ground or to expand your current program. Please see Getting Started for more information.
Q. What types of programming should I implement at my after-school organization?
A. Children benefit most from a well-rounded program that allocates equal time for academic, athletic, and artistic development. Within each area, there should be structured and unstructured activities. After-school programs should not only help kids stay focused on education and civic issues, but also allow time for fun and exploration. For a more detailed programming outline, please refer to the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces.
Q. How do I get funding?
A. We've devoted a separate section of our site to this fundamental question. Please visit Getting Funding.
Q. Do I have to meet the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces before I can get funding for my program in Baltimore City?
A. No. You can apply for and receive funding prior to meeting the Standards. In many cases, your compliance will determine your level of funding under Baltimore's After-School Strategy. In the meantime, becoming familiar with the Standards and assessing your level of compliance is encouraged.
Q. Who developed the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces?
A. These Standards were developed by the ad hoc After-School Strategy Team. This team was composed of after-school partners and program providers, community leaders and members, funders, youth, and parents. The Standards (which appear in bold) are based on the national standards developed by the After-School Association (formerly the National School-Age Care Alliance). The indicators (which appear in italics) were identified by best practice literature review and by local experience.
Q. Where can I find resources/information about developments in after-school care?
A. We maintain a comprehensive list of relevant reports, studies, articles, and other important information concerning after-school care in Resources. Our News section also contains helpful facts.
Remember, Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are far-right posing progressive so when they push $15 an hour in US International Economic Zones due to operate as they do overseas---they KNOW where these policies lead.
'the Fight for $15 minimum-wage campaign',
*********************************************************
TPP Effect #1: Weakening of the Minimum Wage
The most obvious way the TPP will hurt lower or middle class Americans is through the outsourcing of jobs. We have already seen the disastrous effect of NAFTA in this area. Now, American workers will have to compete with those in Vietnam (who get a minimum wage of around 52 cents an hour) and Mexico (who get a minimum wage of around 62 cents an hour) according to this source. Did you know that Brunei does not even have a minimum wage? Why would a corporation pay $15, $10 or even $7.25 when it could pay its workers less than 70 cents per hour?
How this will affect you: the TPP could well mean that many people working minimum wage jobs will have to work for less, or lose their job outright.
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What does $15 an hour have to do with our teachers? If the goal of global corporate campus is to have US citizens living, eating, schooled, working on that campus----and if that global campus is operating the same as an International Economic Zone in Asia---that school on campus will be staffed with an education format tied to global online education lessons written for that specific industry. If you are living on the global UnderArmour campus you will no doubt be learning the garment/sports equipment trade and manufacturing. K-12 will be vocationally structured for students to head to those factories. This means as well there is no need for 7-12 grades as it does not take much knowledge to work in garment industry or dye factories. This is why candidates for Mayor of Baltimore like Warnock and Guterriez are touting all the ties to corporations and apprenticeships at 6th grade---
THEY ARE FAR-RIGHT POLITICIANS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS IN BALTIMORE AS ARE ALL THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Baltimore has outsourced teaching jobs for over a decade as the entire public school structure was dismantled. Teachers and students were deemed FAILING when it was the Baltimore City Hall and School Board controlled by the State of Maryland keeping all funding from reaching our public schools that are failures. That was Nancy Grasmick-----and Baltimore's mayors these few decades.
Baltimore has a high percentage of foreign teachers because of this stat below-----a US teacher would receive $60,000 a year and these immigrant teachers are being paid what is a poverty wage with poverty at $30,000 (Living Wage). So, the city has forced Baltimore's wages down in every industry by fleecing our immigrant community---who the US Constitution says-----IF HIRED BY A US BUSINESS WILL BE PAID THE SAME AS ALL US WORKERS. Always ignoring the US Constitution and Rule of Law.
As the percentage of Teach for America in Baltimore passes the percentage of public school teacher staff -----the dismantling of wage structures-----the idea of having a career-----the students having a moving flow of people through all their school experience rather than people they know and with whom they relate.
Below you see to where a teacher's salary will go if Trans Pacific Trade Pact and International Economic Zone policies are installed as in Baltimore-------even those immigrant teachers earning much better wages than in their own nations will now fall right back to what is made in China et al and will take US teachers as well. $160 a month-----READY OR NOT!
'Teachers from Yilan had posted a letter online that said educators who have worked for 20 years make just over $320 per month, and new teachers make $160 — “even more pathetic,” according to the letter'.
Below see what immigrant teachers in the US earn today vs what they earn back in their own nations-----
South-east Asia Center Preschool Teacher Salary
South-east Asia Center Preschool Teacher average salary is $28,000,
Preschool TeacherSouth-east Asia Center$28,000Chicago, IL, 6060106/13/2005
You can see they are attaching the pension scheme used in the US in lieu of wages with the same intent of using these funds as fodder and then say ---sorry, no more pensions
If you understand that the current Race to the Top and corporate charter system policy was exactly how all these Asian International Economic Zone education structures were installed----you know global pols are simply bringing home what they built overseas
Asia Pacific
Teachers’ Strikes Spread Across Northeast China
By EDWARD WONGDEC. 1, 2014
BEIJING — Strikes by thousands of teachers frustrated by low salaries and mandatory payments to pension plans have spread across cities in northeast China, state news media reported on Monday.
The strikes began last week and have spread to a half-dozen cities or counties near Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, where economic growth has long been slower than elsewhere in China. Classes in some primary and high schools in Heilongjiang have been suspended, the reports said.
Teachers are asking for raises and for the government to end required payments to a pension plan. China National Radio reported that one teacher was making less than $400 a month after working for 25 years.
A one-minute video posted online showed a group of banner-waving peoplein the snow in front of the county government offices in Yilan. “Give me back my salary, give me back my dignity,” the people shouted in unison. A report by Global Times, a state-run newspaper, said teachers in Yilan County held up a banner that said: “We are 4,000 Yilan teachers. Return my withheld money!”
In China, teaching has long been a profession with relatively low pay. Teachers from Yilan had posted a letter online that said educators who have worked for 20 years make just over $320 per month, and new teachers make $160 — “even more pathetic,” according to the letter.
The teachers acknowledged in their letter that the strike had caused hardships for students. “It hurts us that kids are affected because of this,” they wrote. “We’re profoundly sorry. Whatever we owe the kids, we’ll make up for in the future by being available all the time.”
There have been more reports in recent years of strikes in China by people in low-paid occupations. The labor pool of younger workers is getting smaller, and the growth rate of the Chinese economy has been slowing. Salary increases for lower- and middle-class workers have lagged behind inflation in many regions.
The grievances over the teachers’ pension plan have arisen because of a project started in 2004 by Heilongjiang Province, and supported by the central government, that requires government workers, including teachers, to contribute part of their salaries to a centralized provincial pension payment plan for all citizens. Previously, government workers were exempt from making payments.
Another letter posted online by teachers in the city of Shuangcheng, west of Harbin, said they should not be forced to contribute to the pension plan unless the policy is enacted nationally. Officials in Shuangcheng would not discuss the strike and several schools in the city said they were operating normally.
The protests around Heilongjiang began after teachers in the city of Zhaodong, in the same province, took to the streets in mid-November to demand higher salaries. The local government approved an average increase of $125 a month and promised to investigate working conditions, state news media reported. The teachers in Zhaodong then went back to work.
Strikes by teachers have taken place recently in other parts of China. Teachers at one junior high school in Guangdong Province protested in late October when the government began paying them about $260 a month after having promised a monthly salary of $800, according to the People’s Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper. A similar walkout occurred in March at a kindergarten in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong.
In early September, teachers at a high school in the city of Xiaogan, in Hubei Province, went on strike over what they called the government’s refusal to give them the proper status in the public employment system. The status helps determine details of their pension plans.
_________________________________________
This is how you create these same wage inequity structures in education as US corporate executives vs everyone else.
'As such, the vast majority of teenagers here do a double shift at school: They attend normal classes by day but go to hagwons for after-hours study'.
In education-crazy South Korea, top teachers become multimillionaires
Cha Kil-yong is a popular online math tutor in South Korea. Cha often dresses up for his program to engage students' attention. (Shin Woong-jae/for The Washington Post)
By Anna Fifield December 30, 2014 SEOUL —
Clasping his headphones and closing his eyes as he sang into the studio microphone while performing a peppy duet with one of South Korea’s hottest actresses, spiky-haired Cha Kil-yong looked every bit the K-pop star.
But Cha is not a singer or actor. No, he’s a unique kind of South Korean celebrity: a teaching star.
And the song he was singing with Clara, a Korean mega celebrity, in a music video that wouldn’t be out of place on MTV? It was called “SAT jackpot!”
In this education-obsessed country, Cha is a top-ranked math teacher. But he doesn’t teach in a school. He runs an online “hagwon” — or cram school — called SevenEdu that focuses entirely on preparing students to take the college entrance exam in mathematics.
Here, teaching pays: Cha said he earned a cool $8 million last year.
Cha keeps many masks and props in his SevenEdu filming studio. (Shin Woong-jae/for The Washington Post)“I’m madly in love with math,” said Cha, looking the height of trendiness in his crimson shirt and pants and tweed jacket, in his office in Gangnam — a wealthy part of Seoul famous for its conspicuous consumption and featured in the song “Gangnam Style.”
It’s hard to exaggerate the premium South Korea places on education. This is a society in which you have to get into the right kindergarten, so that you can get into the right elementary school, then into the right middle school and high school, and finally into the right college. Which, of course, gets you the right job and scores you the right spouse.
There’s even a phrase to describe the Korean version of a helicopter mother: “chima baram” — literally “skirt wind,” to describe the swish as a mother rushes into the classroom to demand a front-row seat for her child or to question grades.
Many Korean families split and live on opposite sides of the world in pursuit of a better education: The mother and children live in the United States or some other English-speaking country, the better to secure entry to a prestigious university (preferably Harvard). The “goose father” continues working in South Korea, flying in to visit when he can.
All of this combines to make South Korea’s equivalent of the SAT the most important event in a young person’s life.
As such, the vast majority of teenagers here do a double shift at school: They attend normal classes by day but go to hagwons for after-hours study. Increasingly, online hagwons are replacing traditional brick-and-mortar cram schools. The hagwons have become a $20 billion industry.
This devotion to studying is credited with helping South Korea consistently rank at the top of the developed world in reading, math and science, although the latest rankings from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also show that Korean students come last when asked whether they are happy at school. South Korea also has the highest suicide rate in the developed world, which many suggest is related to a high-stress focus on education.
Some politicians and educators are questioning whether things have gotten out of hand. But even parents opposed to this punishing system find it difficult to opt out — their children complain that they can’t keep up if they don’t go to a hagwon.
That’s good news for instructors like Cha, who started teaching at a hagwon to pay his way through his PhD program.
About 300,000 students take his online class at any given time, paying $39 for a 20-hour course (traditional cram schools charge as much as $600 for a course). He teaches them tricks for taking the timed exams, including shortcuts that students can take to solve a problem faster.
Asked what makes him stand out, Cha said: “Suppose you give the same ingredients to 100 different chefs. They would make different dishes even though they’re working with the same ingredients. It’s the same with a math class. Even though it’s all math and all in Korean, you can use different ingredients to come up with different results.”
His studio is set up with a green chalkboard and desks, and behind the camera are piles of props — including hippo and Batman masks and a gold sequined jacket.
“You’re not only teaching a subject, you also have to be a multitalented entertainer,” said Cha, declining to give his age and offering only that he’d been working for 20 years.
On SAT day, he visits schools to offer encouragement to test takers. He also does television ads, endorsing products such as a red ginseng drink meant to boost brain power.
Kwon Kyu-ho, a top-ranked literature teacher, also appears with K-pop stars and has a lucrative side business in celebrity endorsements, lending his name to a chair meant to help people study better.
Maintaining his position doesn’t require just good lessons. Kwon, 33, also gets regular facials and works out, and he said some teachers even have stylists..
“I always wanted to be a teacher, but I feel that regular school teaching has its limits. There is a certain way you have to teach,” said Kwon, whose lessons appear on the sites Etoos and VitaEdu. “And, of course, I’m making a lot more money this way.”
He wouldn’t disclose how much he earned, only that it was “several millions” of dollars a year. The secret of his success, Kwon said, was finding the parts of tests that make most students stumble. He focuses lessons on those problem areas.
This style of education has its upsides, he said.
“I think one of the benefits of private education is that teachers compete with each other and try to develop higher quality content,” he said. “We have money. We can invest in ways that normal schoolteachers can not.”
As President Park Geun-hye promotes a “creative economy” as the key to taking South Korea to the next level in its development, many analysts say the country would do well to take a more creative approach to education.
Lee Ju-ho, who was minister of education until last year, is among them.
“All this late-night study could lead to problems in enhancing their other skills, like character, creativity and critical thinking,” he said. “Hagwon is all about rote learning and memorization.”
Lee said all the problems stem from the college admissions procedures, which have been slow in looking beyond test scores to other criteria such as extracurricular activities and personal essays, as is common in many Western countries.
“We really need to change,” said Lee, who is now a professor at the Korea Development Institute’s School of Public Policy and Management.
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If you read international public policy you have read the term RE-EDUCATION being used to describe the goal of Clinton neo-liberalism in the US. Remember, Stalin and Mao had their version of RE-EDUCATION camps where anyone who did not fall into line and become STANDARDIZED would be sent away until that person fell into line. This is how you force a thousand years of Asian tradition out and place US industrial societal values in. Well, that is what bringing this Asian global corporate neo-liberalism back to the US as Race to the Top and Common Core with all the corporate online structures has as a goal----TO HOMOGENIZE AND RE-EDUCATE the American people away from all that silly Democratic Rule of Law US Constitution WE THE PEOPLE WITH RIGHTS AS CITIZENS Western values of choice, freedom, individual pursuits-----
AND GET WITH THE GLOBAL CORPORATE PLANTATION ROUTINE OF WORK, EAT, SCHOOL, LIVE WHERE YOU WORK AND 15-18 HOURS OF DOING THAT.
Free time? Vacations? Weekends? Not in a US International Economic Zone with global corporate campuses and FOXCONN factories.
All of this Teach for America and bringing immigrant teachers from overseas is to inject this social norm----to get rid of citizens wanting to educate about being a citizen-----about wanting all that diversity in our classrooms----of inspiring a love of life-long learning -----and just get these students ready to work
Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher Hardcover – August 5, 2014
by Garret Keizer (Author)
In this powerful, eloquent story of his return to the classroom, a former teacher offers a rousing defense of his beleaguered vocation
Perhaps no profession is so constantly discussed, regulated, and maligned by non-practitioners as teaching. The voices of the teachers themselves are conspicuously missing. Defying this trend, teacher and writer Garret Keizer takes us to school―literally―in this arresting account of his return to the same rural Vermont high school where he taught fourteen years ago.
Much has changed since then―a former student is his principal, standardized testing is the reigning god, and smoking in the boys' room has been supplanted by texting in the boys' room. More familiar are the effects of poverty, the exuberance of youth, and the staggering workload that technology has done as much to increase as to lighten. Telling the story of Keizer's year in the classroom, Getting Schooled takes us everywhere a teacher might go: from field trips to school plays to town meetings, from a kid's eureka moment to a parent's dark night of the soul.
At once fiercely critical and deeply contemplative, Keizer exposes the obstacles that teachers face daily―and along the way takes aim at some cherished cant: that public education is doomed, that the heroic teacher is the cure for all that ails education, that educational reform can serve as a cheap substitute for societal reformation.
Angry, humorous, and always hopeful, Getting Schooled is as good an argument as we are likely to hear for a substantive reassessment of our schools and those who struggle in them.
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Baltimore is filling with non-profits geared to bring this Asian overseas of hyper-competition and privatized education businesses to the US. All after-school and pre-K funding that could augment and much needed public school and its resources and funding are being sent yet again to tons of education non-profits with no oversight and accountability and again-----the funds will simply move to create these education businesses. These will look like small businesses but be folded into the global corporate education businesses brought from overseas.
There are plenty of good people wanting to help in our neglected school system. We need them to understand it is better to build these structures into our public schools -----the after-school programs in our public schools-----the pre-K in our public schools-----and then we can augment with local education non-profits once we have stabilized our schools.
Every Baltimore Development Corporation candidate for Mayor of Baltimore is pushing all these global corporate neo-liberal education policies.
The After-School Institute is a Baltimore-based capacity-building organization.
Our mission is to provide after-school programs with the training and support they need to offer children and youth quality after-school and out-of-school opportunities.
FAQs
Q. How do I join The After-School Institute and the After-School Network?
A. Please fill out and submit your contact information online at Becoming a Member. You can also come to a Network Meeting and meet us there!
Q. Are Network Meetings open to non-members?
A. Yes. We encourage the participation of all those interested, members or non-members. Network Meetings are FREE for all.
Q. How do I start or expand an after-school program?
A. There are a variety of steps you can take to get your program off the ground or to expand your current program. Please see Getting Started for more information.
Q. What types of programming should I implement at my after-school organization?
A. Children benefit most from a well-rounded program that allocates equal time for academic, athletic, and artistic development. Within each area, there should be structured and unstructured activities. After-school programs should not only help kids stay focused on education and civic issues, but also allow time for fun and exploration. For a more detailed programming outline, please refer to the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces.
Q. How do I get funding?
A. We've devoted a separate section of our site to this fundamental question. Please visit Getting Funding.
Q. Do I have to meet the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces before I can get funding for my program in Baltimore City?
A. No. You can apply for and receive funding prior to meeting the Standards. In many cases, your compliance will determine your level of funding under Baltimore's After-School Strategy. In the meantime, becoming familiar with the Standards and assessing your level of compliance is encouraged.
Q. Who developed the Standards for Baltimore After-School Opportunities in YouthPlaces?
A. These Standards were developed by the ad hoc After-School Strategy Team. This team was composed of after-school partners and program providers, community leaders and members, funders, youth, and parents. The Standards (which appear in bold) are based on the national standards developed by the After-School Association (formerly the National School-Age Care Alliance). The indicators (which appear in italics) were identified by best practice literature review and by local experience.
Q. Where can I find resources/information about developments in after-school care?
A. We maintain a comprehensive list of relevant reports, studies, articles, and other important information concerning after-school care in Resources. Our News section also contains helpful facts.
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