Avuxeni, thanks for your comments–I wrote down all the questions from yesterday’s group and asked their permission to include them in this post. They agreed.
Here are the questions my 12 students asked yesterday about US Public Education–I was hungry to get at the answers to these questions and impressed by the teachers’ thoughtfulness:
How do we assess and evaluate students?
Do high school students experience a lot of pressure as they try to get into college (relative to the massive anxiety Korean students face)?
What kind of extracurricular activities do schools offer?
Do we censor our textbooks, and how are they controlled, in the US? (The teacher who asked this said it was only when she traveled to France and was questioned about communism from the French that she looked into different narratives about North Korea’s and communism’s histories, for example.)
How is inclusion being implemented in the U.S. for special education students in general education classrooms?
Are community college students treated differently by peers and professors when they go to four-year institutions?
What are the requirements to be a teacher?
What is the role of boarding schools in the U.S.?
Are there regulations for student appearance in schools (like the strict ones Korean students must adhere to)?
What is the role of charter schools?
Do we have tracking (”ability level” courses)?
Are teachers allowed to share their political positions as they teach (in Korea teachers must remain neutral–a seemingly objective standard but one that ultimately becomes problematic–as in the case of journalism, for example)?
How do students, especially foreign students, get scholarships to attend college?
The class is only six sessions long–I wish it were longer to be able to offer thorough attention to each of these questions. It will be interesting to see what Korean teachers actually learn from our course at the end. I hope they’ll be satisfied.
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