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In the infographic below, I pitched 20th-century teaching against 21st-century teaching in a number of different areas. In each area, I compared WHAT IS to WHAT COULD BE, based on my own experience as an educator. While I could go into detail about each area, I want to instead address a more fundamental issue. There is a reason why there is no change in the way we educate our children and the biggest fault does not lie in the schools.

Disclaimer: Realizing that most of my readers will be US-based educators, I feel the need to explain that the paragraphs below are written from my own perspective as a teacher in South Korea. I do understand that the situation is different in the country and the district you work in.

In the infographic above, I pitched 20th-century teaching against 21st-century teaching in a number of different areas. In each area, I compared WHAT IS to WHAT COULD BE, based on my own experience as an educator. While I could go into detail about each area, I want to instead address a more fundamental issue. There is a reason why there is no change in the way we educate our children and the biggest fault does not lie in the schools.

In South Korea, a country famous for its’ educational zeal, things look gloomy for education. The traditional way of ‘succeeding in life’ is chiseled in stone and there are only a few people who dare to break out and write their own story. Success in Korea starts from kindergarten - you need to go to the right one. It is followed by going to a good school, suffering through midnight private lessons, and spending high school years studying hard for a high-stakes exam (KSAT exam) that will determine your college placement. After college, you must find a job at a big name corporation (Samsung, LG, you name it), and after that, you are free to spend your life away as a gear in a well-oiled machine of corporate greed. Needless to say, success does not mean happiness. Suicide rates in South Korea are among the highest in the world.

Why the rant about the Korean understanding of success? It all starts with education. In order to fit the larger picture, the educational system needs to do exactly what is required of it - prepare students for THE EXAM. Everything else is deemed worthless by the parents and, consequently, by the educators themselves, who only wish ‘the best’ for the children. How things are done on the 20th-century side of the infographic is indicative of the overarching goal of such education - the KSAT exam.

Working at a private school, the biggest challenge educators face is the parents’ desire for the school to conform to the rules of the game so that their children do score higher than their public school counterparts. Extracurricular activities are being sacrificed for the sake of KSAT study halls and 21-century initiatives are being shut down by the administration because of the parental pressure.

Being a teacher, there is always a temptation to put the blame on our students. They do not do homework, they are not motivated, , they disrespect authority. They are not motivated because no one is motivated by the prospect of mindless information drilling from 7am to 12pm. They disrespect authority because their parents do not get a chance to teach them on this kind of schedule. If we want to see a change in how this generation is educated, this society needs to start by changing the way we see them, what we model for them, and the things we expect of them.