Random Quote
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
---- Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells
Critical Thinking in “non-western” leaners
Jeffinkorea Wrote a long piece on critical thinking and willingness of learners to take risks with an extensive quote from Richard Feynman I would highly recommend any teachers who have experience the frustrations of having students unwilling to ask questions or participate in class due to the risk of losing face read this post as well as the discussion that continues in the comment section.
Here is a couple of excerpts
I have ranted for years about the uselessness of the rote memorization system of education that prevails in Korea… I have seen it in every area of education that I have been exposed to in this country. There is memorizing and pure knowledge being accumulated, but there is very little, if any, true learning and educational growth occurring.
Jeff then goes on with a personal anecdote followed by a long quote about teaching physics in Brazil. It is really astounding the parellels that can be drawn here. As Jeff suggests just replace Brazil with Korea (or whatever country you teach in) and you will see little flashes of light exploding in your head.
Scott wrote 348 words on Saturday Mar 6, 2004 at 12:54 PM
Beliefs like those expressed by Jeff can be heard everywhere in Asia. My agreement with them has waned as I have gained more understanding of education and of Asia.
Jeff makes two points. One of these is that there’s a problem with education. The other is that there’s a problem with students. And if I may sum up the unspoken conclusion of Jeff’s blog, it is that students in Korea just aren’t as good as students back in the homeland.
I don’t know if Jeff has ever taught in the USA or Canada or wherever he comes from. I only have limited experience as well. But when I talk to my relatives and friends who are teaching in Canada, I hear the same complaints. I hear that universities are now letting in anyone (not like before when we were students). I hear that students don’t have basic writing skills. I hear that the only thing students want now is a job, so in class they won’t do anything but what you tell them. And it goes on and on and on.
I don’t know Jeff, and it’s possible that if we talked over a beer, I’d agree with everything he has to say. But if I had to pick a quote, I wouldn’t pick Richard Feynman on Brazil, I’d pick Jonathan Spence on foreigners working in China. I really don’t want to type the whole thing.
“As we look back across the cycle from 1620 to 1960, we can observe the standpoint of superiority from which Western advisers approached China. This superiority sprang from two elements: the possession of advanced skills and the sense of moral rightness. Convinced that their goals were good and that their advice was sorely needed, the Westerners adopted a propriety air toward China; their refusal to accept the validity of their goals, and Chinese rejection of their advice, were met with Western bewilderment or anger.”
I give up. Anyone who wants to read more can find the entire quotation in the conclusion of Jonathan Spence, “To Change China”.
Perhaps I’ll write more later.
Sean. wrote 11 words on Saturday Mar 6, 2004 at 01:42 PM
The link to the book, which is very cheap is here
Sean. wrote 197 words on Saturday Mar 6, 2004 at 01:49 PM
Scott,
I think you also have some valid points as I have not taught back in Canada either and have read reports of poor skills of new university students.
Though I do tend to side more with Jeff, but that is coming from a one-sided somewhat myopic point of view. My memory as a student is that there were high demands put on me to produce critical work. If I didn’t I got poor grades.
The problem I have in Korea is that as teachers we are required to give a certain percentage of A’s, B’s, & C’s. I’m required to give 20-30 percent A’s in my class. what if my class is so outstanding that 60% deserve A’s then I have to give low grades to students who deserve more.
The reverse is also true, if I am teaching very poor students who do not participate then I am required to give some of them A’s even though they may at best deserve a C. I am assuming (I know the dangers of that) that back in Canada professors are not required to give a particular number of A’s in order to keep the administration happy.
Scott wrote 303 words on Sunday Mar 7, 2004 at 01:34 AM
By definition, teachers at the university level were better students than their students are. A colleague of mine, Joseph Linzmeier, told me just yesterday that American graduate advisors complain that their students don’t want to become faculty at research universities.
Once again, I could probably sit down over a beer with Jeff and straighten this all out. But we’re not talking over a beer, so this may come over a bit too strong. I think Jeff has forgotten where he is. Education serves his student’s needs in a very different way than it did him. They’re students in Korea in a different generation.
I think he also ignores the language problem. I don’t know the students he was teaching about the WTO. It’s possible that they were not very good students in the Korean hierarchy and that similar students in America would be equally disappointing. I suspect a different explanation, however. They were there to study English. They don’t give a crap about the WTO or his interpretation of world trade. And if they did, even if they can chat fluently about movie stars and their weekend, the topic is just a little too difficult for them to be popping off questions about the most difficult topic they have even thought about.
Give them a break, Jeff. They’re undergrads. And they’re functioning in a strange, foreign language. How good is your Korean? Could you talk about world trade in Korean or any language other than English? I’m going to step past the boundary of civility one more time. I have frequently found that the harshest judges of Asian education and student English attainment are the teachers who have no knowledge of the local language or even interest in local society.
I don’t know anything about Jeff, but perhaps—just perhaps—this is a perspective problem
Jeff in Korea wrote 124 words on Tuesday Mar 9, 2004 at 11:52 PM
The following is my responding clarifications to an interesting discussion (including comments) on Blinger’s blog about my article on the state of education in Korea. The post is in response a comment by Scott, who suggests that I may be being a bit over-critical of the Korean educational system, and that I may not have considered the language ability of students, or considered my own ignorance of Korea language and society.
Scott,
Let me begin by stating that I am completely and entirely out of my element participating in any sort of discussion about linguistics and ESL. I am just posting a few points of clarification to assist with the discussion being carried on in this thread.
To read more visit me at:
http://www.jsharrison.com/korea/2004/03/09/continuing-education/#comments
Scott wrote 701 words on Wednesday Mar 10, 2004 at 06:23 PM
Thanks Jeff. This is my reply
I sometimes forget that most blogs serve personal expression; your blog more so than mine. I can understand your feelings about Korean education because they are common among Western teachers working in Asian universities. There was also a time when I felt the same way about teaching here. Today, I don??t think what you wrote is wrong, so much as it incomplete.
Regardless of your interpretation of what the class was, you were teaching EFL. I am sure that your Department vetted the students very well, but that doesn??t change my point. There is simply no way that these students could have had a grasp of English and it usage equivalent to a similar class in the West. When you state that there was no language problem, this is just not believable. There may have been no comprehension problem, but there would have had to have been some language problem.
I can elaborate on this if you want, but if you??re willing to accept that language was a problem then your situation becomes much more understandable. In spite of your mastery of law, you aren??t able to communicate your message to these students because of your lack knowledge of how to communicate it in an EFL environment. Really, you??re in the same situation that most new teachers find themselves in when sent off to teach. In fact, your situation was probably worse because you??re unaware that this is even a factor.
Leading conversational activities with Asian students, especially advanced students dealing with difficult material, is complex and takes a great deal of experience. I feel I??m really good at this right now, but I didn??t always feel that way. It took me almost 10 years to become what I think of as OK. It??s not easy, but then, why would it be? Why would it be any easier than mastering certain aspects of law.
Here??s where I fear I will go beyond the boundaries of civility.
I could give you pointers about dealing with these situations that would produce discussion and questions. But I suspect that you wouldn??t be very happy about teaching the kind of class I would recommend. I suspect that you would say you are teaching law and not EFL, and that such methods are undignified or unprofessional, or unfamiliar to you. There would be a thousand other reasons why you had to run a lecture course rather than one based around activities that students had to complete.
But here lies the problem. Now it??s no longer a matter of student??s unwillingness to do what you expect; it is your unwillingness to do what it takes to get them to do what you expect. Put another way, the students aren’t exactely what you expected of them.
All of this takes me back to my quote from Jonathan Spence, which I will reproduce at length,
“As we look back across the cycle from 1620 to 1960, we can observe the standpoint of superiority from which Western advisers approached China. This superiority sprang from two elements: the possession of advanced skills and the sense of moral rightness. Convinced that their goals were good and that their advice was sorely needed, the Westerners adopted a propriety air toward China; their refusal to accept the validity of their goals, and Chinese rejection of their advice, were met with Western bewilderment or anger.”
Things aren??t the way they were back home. Things don??t get done our way. Cultural differences mean more than tea ceremony and kimchi. Koreans get to decide what the best way to solve Korean problems are, regardless of whether we like their way or not. We can join in if we want, but we had better do it their way or they just won??t listen.
I know you??re just letting off steam, but I hear this all the time from burned-out English teachers. I really believe it??s all a matter of technique who shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I figure the questions and commenst are there if you want them to be, but if lecture, you??re not going to get the same kind of class. Or at least that??s how I think about all this.
Jeff in Korea wrote 748 words on Wednesday Mar 10, 2004 at 11:36 PM
I think your points have some validity as far as foreigners teaching natives, regardless of whether teaching English or teaching in English. However, it does not address or relate to the state of Korean education in Korean settings where Korean students are taught Korean university subjects by Korean professors.
Completely setting aside all references to English, the Korean education system not only does not teach creative, practical and/or critical analysis of issues, but punishes any such behavior. The students who wholsale copy journal articles, thesis papers, text book entries, are rewarded with good grades, while the person who interjects personal opinions, theories, ideas, or questions into their work are marked down for it.
The student who is rewarded most is the student who can best mimic the teacher without exceeding the teacher’s ability.
My scientist and engineer friends bemoan the fact that Koreans are unsurpassable at replicating experienments and carrying out plans, designs, and projects to the minutest detail, yet are utterly hopeless when they are put in a situation where they have to be creative and find a completely new way of doing something.
I see it in my field. As I said, I am not a teacher. I am lawyer. In my firm, we hire new lawyers and paralegals that have studied law for years. They have learned that in situation “X”, the law is “Y.”. However, when I send them off to research a point that is particularly negative to our case with the instruction to find a way out, they will return with a stack of cases and scholarly opinions that show why we will lose on that point. I already knew that. I wanted to find a way out. I will then say something like, “Well, what if we look at if from this side and argue like THIS, will it affect our legal standing.” They look at me blankly for a moment and then the light goes on. Essentially, I have to teach them how to apply all of the dry law they have learned to specific situation and teach them how to look at things from several diffent angles, how to follow tangential lines of reasoning and how, when all else fails, to give a passionate, but completely unsupportable argment in favor of a certain idea.
The point of education is to education and prepare for “the real world.” Korean students should exit university prepared to deal with and adapt to the reality of a global economy. However, they are not prepared. They cannot be prepared, because they are not shown how.
From kindergarten through their senior year of high school, Korean students have a single objective, that is to memorize enough of the right facts to be able to pass the nationwide, standardized college entrance exam. There is no place for creativity or critical thinking in eductation becuase there is no place for creativity or critical thinking on the exam. You fail this exam your life is over. Thus, you memorize what you are required to memorize and nothing more.
University life is a continuation of this. The professor is the expert. Listen to him but do not question. You may find it hard to believe, but I am serious when I say that Korean students in Korean classes with Korean professors in any subject from Mining to Korean language and literature are not allowed to criticize, contradict, or question the professor’s statements.
Korea wants to be respected internationally as a leader in all fields of business. This requires creativity, innovation, and critical analysis. However, these things simply do not exist in the Korean education system.
I agree whole-heartedly that they people who teach this way shouldn’t be teaching anymore, but that is the way they were taught, their teachers were taught and so on. It is the educational culture to do it this way. Of course questions and comments are there, but the Korean Education System does not want them to be there. Even if answers were provided to the questions and comments, the students have never been taught what to do with or how to apply the knowledge.
THAT is the unfortunate reality fo the system. Korean educators themselves are aware of many of the shortcomings. But, who will be the first to change? No one wants to be the first to fail at such an experiment. I don’t know what it will take to change the system. I only know that the system must change.
-Jeff H.
Scott wrote 232 words on Friday Mar 12, 2004 at 12:22 AM
Your responses raise many questions for me. There are questions about the education and development that you raise whose answer is long and complicated, and perhaps I address later. But I think some of the problems you encountered in your classroom have strong implications for an understanding of why Korean students are the way they are.
My point is that there are ways to get students raised in even the most authoritarian school systems to talk and openly ask question. I suspect that there are some Korean professors using these techniques already.
If we go back to my speculations about the thoughts of the Korean students in your class, what reason would you have given them to believe you were teaching something different than their Korean professors? If I saw your lecture (and I presume it was a lecture style class), could I have mistaken it for a class run by a Korean professor? Why would your students have thought you wanted anything different from them when you were doing exactly what their Korean professor do?
If an authoritarian system of instruction, like Korea’s, is to change, it will not be because instructors stand in the front of the class and demand a new standard of conduct. It will have to be because the instructor conducts him or herself in such a new fashion that it is clear something new is demanded.
Dave wrote 395 words on Monday Mar 22, 2004 at 12:12 AM
I ran across this discussion fairly late, and it may be too late to make a worthwhile contribution. However, I’ll try anyway.
The wider phenomenon Jeff has been talking about isn’t really just about asking questions - it’s about closing the gap between ‘study’ or ‘work’ and ‘life.’
The first time I ran across this kind of problem, the speaker talked about ‘decontextualisation.’ Simply speaking, a lot of the time academic effort is removed from the real life context. So in Scott’s example, you asked a new lawyer to go and do some research on a point of law looking for a way out. They go and do the research, but they don’t understand the all-important *context* - why they are doing it, and what they want to achieve.
Some people are able to integrate what they learn in an academic setting with their overall understanding of the world, previous knowledge, real life experience - the works. When they ask questions, they are looking to find out how your instruction might fit with what they already know about the world, either from study or experience.
Then there are other people who have less interaction between ‘study’ and real life. They don’t see the connection between what goes on in the classroom and current events, their own lives, or reality as a whole - they learn, but what they learn doesn’t have a context.
What Feynman was talking about was the same thing - they know the maths, or the phenomena, but they don’t see what the relationship is with the real world!
I have been trying to work out how to make the connections between study and real life more real. I wrote an article about it on my website -
http://dave.aiesec.ws/stories/storyReader$38
I certainly wouldn’t say that education outside eastern Asia doesn’t have the same problems - because I think it does. However, maybe relatively more people in Korea see education as an arbitrary way to rise in society (like the Chinese academic exams to become a state administrator throughout classical China) instead of a way to learn skills and knowledge to do things. (Believe me, there are plenty of people out here in the ‘west’ who think that’s what education is about too!)
In any case, do you have any ideas about how to open your students minds to a different way of learning?
Sean. wrote 238 words on Tuesday Mar 23, 2004 at 01:09 PM
Dave,
thanks for your comments, sorry I took a while to get to you. You ideas about:
is something I have talked about with others regarding application of theory to classroom practice. I can almost immediately see how to apply what I am reading to my lesson plans and classroom activities. But other teachers I know think there is nothing related between theory and practice. For me as I am reading any of the books for my studies I am constantly having little epiphanies about how to change my class.
I understand that I may be unusual in this aspect. But I do believe that this skill can be learned and taught. I also believe that it needs to be taught not only to Asian students but also to westerners. Most westerners think they know how to think critically but many do not or not as well as they should. In todays BBC there is an article Learning to think the right way that I think everyone should read and consider carefully what it is saying.
Dave wrote 112 words on Wednesday Mar 24, 2004 at 11:59 PM
Personally I find the attitude of finding skills rather than teaching them to be rather repellent. It basically says that teachers have nothing to do with the development of critical thinking.
I don’t believe this. I think you might say that you can *nurture* the skills, whenever you see them emerging.
If there is one thing that I learned at university, it’s that they don’t usually *teach* you very much. They offer the opportunity to learn - then *you* do the work. (That said, I have met a few lecturers who were honestly interested in actually developing cognitive ability instead of imparting knowledge or technical skills - but they were rare specimens.)
Sean. wrote 13 words on Thursday Mar 25, 2004 at 12:14 AM
I also like the word nurture better than to unearth or discover skills.
leo wrote 78 words on Wednesday Mar 22, 2006 at 04:20 PM
Hi there ,
I am spending alot of time to read your blog , since today is not a school day for me ,
I am also very interested in creating a Program called ” Critical Thinking For SEFC students in China ” SEFC refers to the textbooks we are using for high school in China
anyone could share some ideas on this ?
thank you very much
I will keep reading and learn from you guys
leo
Michael Turton wrote 267 words on Sunday Apr 16, 2006 at 05:03 PM
Unmitigated crap. Not only can critical thinking skills be taught, they are every day. Critical thinking is more than just the kind of logic that one often finds in critical thinking textbooks, but requires two key abilities, the ability to make connections between things that are apparently different, and the ability to see beneath the surfaces of things—critical insight. Naturally certain individuals will have much greater critical insight than others. But it has to be honed. In lit classes one learns techniques used in literature like paralleling or chiasms, in art one learns things like the use of light, in the sciences one learns all sorts of stuff, from “utility functions” to “natural selection”...
...further, critical thinking depends on mastering bodies of knowledge. You cannot, for example, speak meaningfully about the life cycles of malaria without mastering a whole body of data and concepts, including the work of others. You cannot critique historical methodology in Old Testament studies without first mastering that methodology—which is not innate, but an accumulation of prior knowledge about practice and about the world. All of that has to be learned/taught. .....I
...and let’s not forget statistics. Humans are not born statistically competent; human cognition consistently rings up wrong answers when used to analyze statistical events. Statistics is a kind of critical thinking about the world that can ONLY be learned/taught. It does not exist in the untutored human mind the way logic innately does.
It is high time the myth of the innate critical thinker was laid to a well-deserved rest.
Michael
Sean. wrote 143 words on Sunday Apr 16, 2006 at 05:36 PM
Michael,
I edited your post to fix your html - no content was changed. I agree with you that critical thinking needs to be taught and in an earlier comment I said that exact same thing.
Having said that nurturing the ability to think critically is not incompatible with teaching it. I would draw a parallel with someone who is a math genius, until they were taught they basics they didn’t know they were a genius. But once they knew the basics and the skill was nurtured they could reach thier true potential.