[모임공지] 2월 28일 화요일 중급영어토론 Topic (댓글꼭!)

[Sunny]

토픽업로드합니다~

즐거운 주말 보내시고, 화요일에 뵈요!!!!!!

1. Greetings

2. Small Talk: White lies

February 17, 2012, 7:58 PM HKT

3. Article1: Why East Asian Students Are Superior

American parents looking to send their children to the world’s best schools might want to start looking East.

And we don’t mean the East Coast.

East Asia is now home to the world’s best primary and secondary schools, producing students who are able to outperform their counterparts in the Western world, according to a recent report from the Grattan Institute, a think tank based in Australia.

The average 15-year old in Shanghai is performing math at levels that are two or three years ahead of students in the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Europe, according to the report, which was based on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment.

Hong Kong students are at least one year ahead in reading and math when compared to U.S. and European children, the report said.

Results of the study underscore a global shift that is occurring both economically and now, according to Grattan, academically. East Asian primary and secondary schools are better at addressing their own weaknesses and know how to improve the classroom through policy, the study said. In 2006, Hong Kong raised the reading levels of its students to No. 2 in international assessments, up from 17th just five years earlier. Singapore has cut courses for teachers that don’t result in higher performance for their students.

Educational institutions in East Asia are also doing more with less, the study says. South Korea spends around half of what the U.S. spends on its primary school students, yet South Korean pupils outperform their U.S. counterparts in reading, math and science.

President Barack Obama recently pledged to earmark $80 million for math and science education, believing it will improve the economy, according to a recent report in the Associated Press.

The study also comes as the U.S. questions its educational standards and as figures such as the “Tiger Mother” — – a Yale Law School professor who has preached tough discipline for kids — have caused American parents to rethink their own roles in learning and to ask themselves whether Asian mothers are superior.

The U.S. has already taken notice of the East Asian educational prowess. Earlier this month, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Singapore and the U.S., building on an earlier agreement in 2002 that focused on the teaching and learning of math and science. The new MOU continues to prioritize the two subjects as key areas of collaboration in the two countries – with Singapore having some of the best math and science high school scores in the world, and the U.S. some of the worst.

Back in 2009, a delegation from Singapore’s Ministry of Education was sent to Washington DC, to share the “Singapore model method” for learning mathematics. In the same year, President Obama gave a speech to the National Academy of Sciences, devoting an entire part of it to the importance of math and science education. In his comparison of math scores between US and foreign countries, the first country he mentioned was Singapore.

“Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world,” Mr. Obama said.

At least in China, such rankings are not necessarily cause for celebration. Many Chinese see the country’s education system, in particular its failure to foster innovation, as one weakness preventing it moving further along the path to superpower status. The country’s students have increasingly flocked to the West for college, and even high school, in an effort to escape the rote memorization preval‎ent in Chinese schools and cultivate the sort of creativity seen as producing figures like late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

– Laurie Burkitt and Shibani Mahtani

Keywords: Education, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea

4. Article2: Book smart vs. street smart

By Lee Sun-ho

Would you prefer to be book smart or to be street smart? What are the pros and cons of each concept? And what is your current understanding of such concepts in Korea today?

The above questions have been controversial issues since 2007 in human communities from time to time without any clear-cut answers. It is a riddle-missing a piece of the puzzle that needs to be solved. We are still interested in pondering over such concepts despite the diverse realms of thoughts of different people, whether conservative or progressive.

We all know people who are book smart but clueless in the realistic world, while those who are street smart but unable to deal with any environment other than the one we are used to. Book smart could be best comprehended when we are at school. That is being able to succeed scholastically but not necessarily in the real world.

Street smart is able to handle the tangible life efficiently. That is about intelligence gained out of school, getting along with others based on experience.

Book smart involves wisdom on how to think wisely about the nature of the world and how to behave in certain atmosphere relying on general knowledge of how the world works. There are still some empty spaces that affect our lack of decisions in life.

On the other hand, the street smart considers the ability of adaptation to different situations that we encounter to achieve a certain productive end aiming at the instinct for the betterment of our lives. In the process of implementation, there follows a lot of trial and error in our lively circumstances.

Regrettably in Korea, the misguided book smart youth have been increasing drastically for several decades deeply influenced by teachers belonging to the Korean Teachers and Educational Worker’s Union (KTU). The unionized teachers have infused intentionally-distorted untrue Korean history in favor of pro-North Korea and anti-America, plus left-wing notions into sensitive young students.

After brain-washed learning and upon being engaged in various brackets of social assignments, many of them have become misguided street smart leaders. They are apt to misuse their own discretion in the wrong but prejudiced direction for the sake of private wants and personal obstinacy only on the hypocritical pretext of exercising public need and performing official tasks.

Irrespective of book smart or street smart, strong distorted emotions excel among those useful-idiot intellectuals in our surroundings. They include clergymen, professors, prosecutors, judges, military personnel, policemen, lawyers, social workers and, of course, politicians. Abuse of power and negligence of common sense are key obstacles in this emerging Korean society.

Usually people considered to be book smart are known as lacking in street smarts, and vice versa, as theory and practice both have limitations. To drive a desirable development forward, it is quite possible for anyone to be both. Many people naturally possess both forms.

Others begin with one and need to make an effort to add to the other. Book smart people might need to put down the books and theory, to gain profound experimental knowledge. Street smart people might need to stop living in the moment and go to the library.

Being book smart is definitely as important as being street smart. Can anyone reach a satisfactory compromise between both book and street smart? Certainly, a person needs to find the optimized checks and balances of the two through an adequate mixture.

Learning and doing (theory and practice) should work together to achieve complementary consequences. Both of them have specialty and morality in meeting the betterment of future life. Like the two sides of a coin, one completes and supports another on the firm ground of value-creating coordination and cooperation.

The writer is an outside director of KunWha Pharmaceutical Co. in Seoul. His e-mail address is kexim2@unitel.co.kr.

[joanne*]

수고하셨어요~ 참석할게요 ^^

[Lola]

불참용~ㅜㅜ

[Matias]

Matias 참석요ㅎ

[Song2]

See ya~

[jiyoung bae]

참여합니다~

[*Claire]

참석해요!!

[James. lee]

오늘은 불참 ㅠㅠ