The Education

As highlighted from the post "Culture and Traditions: Religion & Beliefs", education is highly regarded in the korean society. As such, education system in seoul or any other parts of South Korea tends to incorporate competitveness into the students. The Ministry for Education, Science and Technology often reffered to as Ministry of Education oversees the education systems in South Korea.

A typical student would go through:

• 6 years in elementary/primary level school
• 3 years in middle/secondary level school
• 3 years in high/tertiary level school

Students who wish to continue their course of study into the university level, must go through the annual SAT exam at the end of the year. SAT Reasoning Test or also known as Scholastic Aptitude Test is an academic measure and affiliated with the United States.

The academic year typically begins in the month of March until mid-July, where there is a semester break and resumes back at the end of August until mid February. There are vacations throughout the academic year.

Interestingly enough, according to AsianInfo, the education systems experience a sort of change when South Korea open its doors to the Westerners. Could this be a result from globalisation and wanting to be on par with the education level outside its borders? The traditional system is based on the teacher-centered way of education whereby the information impart in one-way from teacher to student. Ever since western concepts managed to enter, a new learning has developed that is the student-centered way of education. It refers to whereby accomodating to the needs of the students and the information is of dual exchange. Many private schools offering holistic english learning environ,ment has also been set up. Although modern teaching concepts have been established since then, many of old-school learning environment are still persistent in the education society. All in all I feel that a mixture of these two concepts shall ensure that respect for seniors (teachers) still exist while creativity and practical thinking are instilled to the young learners.