A Robot In Every Korean Kindergarten By 2013?

kkleiner writes "Elementary school children in Korea in the cities of Masan and Daegu are among the first to be exposed to EngKey, a robotic teacher. The arrival of EngKey to Masan and Daegu is just a small step in the mechanization of Korean classrooms: the Education Ministry wants all 8400 kindergartens in the nation to have robotic instructors by the end of 2013. Plans are already under way to place 830 bots in preschools by year's end. EngKey can hold scripted conversations with students to help them improve their language skills, or a modified version can act as a telepresence tool to allow distant teachers to interact with children."

Comments

this is insane

[Anonymous Coward]

and is down to the cost of energy vs the cost of people . People are taxed at 40%.

This can happen only in Korea

[arivanov]

Have you seen a Korean child? Think of a ragdoll cat. You put it somewhere (with books and toys in hand) and you can safely come back a couple of hours later. It will be there and you will not hear a squeak in the meantime. I have no idea how they do it and I am not sure if I should admire it or get shivers from it.

In any case, a robot will not survive 15 minutes in a classroom with average European (or american for that matter) kids. I know what my daughter will do. If she cannot get her hands on a screwdriver she will craft herself a replacement out of whatever she can find and start disassembling the thing until she has figured out what makes it tick or it is so dead that she will lose interest. That is probably still better than the reaction of her brother who would simply use it for target practice.

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen a Korean child? Think of a ragdoll cat. You put it somewhere (with books and toys in hand) and you can safely come back a couple of hours later. It will be there and you will not hear a squeak in the meantime.

I see that you haven't raised a Korean child.

Listen, dude, I don't know what the hell you're smoking about (maybe you just found one highly aberrant kid and assumed all Koreans are like that), but Koreans are just human. Good kids will do their homework, eat their supper, clean themselves, and go to bed. Bad kids will inhale buthane (it makes them high), pwn Americans in WoW, drink and have sex. Most kids are somewhere in between.

We don't have a magic recipe for making our kids behave like a civilized human being. You know, if we had such a thing, we'd have conquered the world by now, don't you think?

* A proud (but exhausted) father of two Korean kids.

* As for TFA, shouldn't our government spend their tax on getting *human* teachers? You know, the kind of guys who can actually feed and take care of young kids until their parents get home at 10 pm. Yeah I know I'm asking too much for our politicians...

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[Luckyo]

This is admitted by government and more wealthy families rather openly as a huge problem. Schools in South-Korea are essentially institutions that destroy creativity by design - they are designed to produce robotic-like work drones for huge South-Korean conglomerates.
An average school day for young children in South-Korea is about 12-14 work hours. First at school, then at tutoring school, then at home. There was a great documentary about the issue on BBC about a year ago, where they showed that average day, and noted that even prime minister of the time spoke of this system as something bad, and something they want to change. Document noted that more wealthy families actively send their children out of the country specifically to avoid the system, and mentality that comes with it.

Essentially it's a mix of local culture and the desire of major conglomerates to have cheap and robotic, yet educated workforce.

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[Sycraft-fu]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson had a great bit on this, which I cannot find right now, where he encourages parents to let their kids take things apart, let them learn. He argues that kids are born scientists. They don't believe in shit like horoscopes and they want to experiment on their world, their surroundings. So he says that when kids want to take something apart, and it is dangerous/expensive/etc, let them, let the experiment run its course. Let them keep and nurture that natural curiosity that is so key to being a scientist.

I think too many people who see only the superficial level idealize the Asian education/cultural systems because they see the children as being so much more quiet and respectful, and they think that is good. Ok, maybe so, but at what cost? For the last 15-20 years Japan has been having a major crisis in their educational system that they aren't producing creative thinkers. They produce conformity very well and this comes at the cost of creativity. They've been working to rectify it, but it is hard since (as we know) changing an educational system isn't easy and there's cultural issues here too.

We've not found the perfect way to raise kids yet, and probably never will, humans are complex. However you need to look carefully at the pros and cons of various things before jumping on them as being The One True Way(tm). So Korea has an effective way to teaching kids to be very quiet and behaved. Ok, great, at what cost and using what methods? If you can't answer that, then you really aren't in a position to say it is a good way of doing thing.

I have to agree with Dr. Tyson: The innate curiosity children have is important, and should be encouraged. Wondering about the world and trying to learn is how we've gotten to where we are. Sitting down and being content with what you are given gets us nowhere.

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[sznupi]

Vs. the model of a perfect average child "diagnosed" with ADHD, drugged with Ritalin, etc.?

(one can wonder from where does the desirability of ragdoll cats come from)

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[arivanov]

We don't have a magic recipe for making our kids behave like a civilized human being. You know, if we had such a thing, we'd have conquered the world by now, don't you think?

Civilized != Unruly and vice versa. A kid that will refuse to sit in one place and read a book when told and will go wondering off around and exploring his surroundings may still be perfectly civilised. A kid that will disassemble her robot tutor is not uncivilised, she is curious. A kid that makes a hellish racket when playing may not necessarily be uncivilised and so on.

As far as conquering, questioning authority and independence are essential attributes to a conquest mentality. It is exactly the opposite to what you are inferring to as "civlised". Good example is medieval Japan which folded onto itself and staid stagnant for centuries. It was civilised to the bone. Super duper civilised society where everyone knew its name and place. Question authority? Yeah right, where is that blunt bamboo saw for your neck?

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Being married to a Korean woman, and having lived and visited South Korea many times, I can speak with some authority. Pretty much everyone you will meet in South Korea is "quiet and respectful". Part of their culture is being respectful to others. If you act like a lout and a buffoon over there, you will soon be shunned by _everyone_. Your actions have a social consequence, something that is sadly lacking in many western countries.

Another thing is that almost everyone you meet has been educated to a high level. Even the workers in fast food restaurants tend to have degrees. A consequence of this high level of education is that you _have_ to study hard as a child and get qualifications just to survive. Another consequence of this high level of general education is that people are more refined in their manners and actions towards others.

Laziness is abhorrent to Koreans. It's not tolerated. They have a strong work ethic, which may seem like anathema to the Western World, but it produces far more capable and responsible people.

Re:This can happen only in Korea

[damburger]

Would your children disassemble a cat?

I have a 12 week old kitten, recently visited by three small children (aged 5, 3 and 6 months). The 3 and 5 year old were very gentle with her and could basically play with her unsupervised (and did so at several points). These were not unusually well behaved British children.

You don't have to pass the Turing test; you just have to get your robot to simulate as much agency and intention as a small animal and they won't destroy it on purpose. Children raised properly aren't mindlessly destructive.

Re:All Korean classrooms?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, had to go to CNN to find that one out, even TFA was just saying "Korea".

Might help in our steps towards the stars, one day

[sznupi]

Yes, such robots seem somewhat superficial now (where are all the old people / couldn't they us them?); perhaps the rate of progress made many of us think in terms of quickly showing tangible benefits & utility of something (which was rarely the case, for most things around us)

But "descendants" of such robots might prove crucially important in one of our "ultimate" endeavors ... after they've been sufficiently improved, most likely over the course of centuries. Well, those might be first steps of that process.

Fitting, considering the region is revving up its space programs? ;p

(yes, hibernation being also a possibility - question is, at what cost of mass to support one grown human vs. equivalent mass of fully automated systems meant to kickstart the colony; and the crew would be usually of skeleton size at most anyway, with robots certainly still crucial)