We are the Hell's Angels Capital of Canada (though the government recently seized their clubhouse complete with huge Hell's Angels logo). For those of you not familiar with the Angels imagine if in your city the local organized crime lords had a big banner above where they met saying "Mafia" or "Triads" and a store which sold merchandise (closed for a while now.) I suggest we track the crackhouses, grow-ops and hooker corners.
Having taught for a bit in Korea, I wouldn't wish their academic life on any child. The kids spend so much time studying that they really do nothing else. There is no way a fifth grader should be in extra tutoring academies until 9 at night, then have to go home and do homework. They are often stressed always tired, and most seem to have lost the ability to creatively apply anything they have learned.
As far as North America goes it seems to be the exact opposite. When I went through school, partially in the US partially in Canada, I never really had to try. I rarely did homework and when I did I did an extremely half assed job, and I always did well enough on the tests to get a good grade in my classes. University was initially a bit of a shock because I really didn't have to learn any good student tactics to do well in high school. I did adjust eventually, but it involved actually doing some work. I won't even go into the extreme over coddling of kids that seems to be taking place these days.
I do think however different people progress at different paces, and to think that geometry, which many students could learn easily in fourth grade, should be taught in grade four I think is a bit of an overstatement. Ideally, I think it should be somewhere between the two extremes, preferably with some emphasis on challenging the kids who need to be challenged and helping those who need it. Trouble is it's not just the school systems it's the entire society, being smart is not cool, children watching TV for hours a day is accepted and the norm. Parents often do not take their responsibilities seriously enough. If you have kids, and don't have time to spend with them on their homework, you are probably a very bad parent. I know economics does make this impractical for some, but for many the choice is between buying shit and making more money to buy shit, and spending time with kids.
It's really easy to say, "Terrorists routinely do this." I suspect there is some truth to it in this case, but I don't like the whole "Take my word for it. The terrorists are always doing this." being a justification for whatever the fuck rights they wish to trample.
After a year here I still have trouble figuring out the culture. My experience in the computing area has scared the hell out of me.
Our school network is plagued with problems of which could be solved by 3 hours of a decent techs time. Instead they just reformat the machines manually from time to time. The CD drives which are required for some of the courses I teach rarely work, because they have put non tower cases on their sides no one would even consider putting them the right way. Our school grade book software employed some of the worst design I have ever come across coupled with a set of activeX controls which broke after installing MS Security updates (It stayed broken for any computer with the updates for about 7 months.)
Everyone uses sites like naver and daum and thinks they are great. In fact when I go into the korean teachers room they are generally talking on cell phones and buying purses off naver.
There are huge numbers of PC rooms in every neighborhood and most of them seem to be equally badly administered.
Next to our school building there is a place called techno world which consists of 8 floors all but two of which are packed with very small individual retailers selling basically the same crap as the people next to them for the same price. I needed a firewire drive enclosure and out of the 40+ stores which sold computer parts and computers one of them had one firewire enclosure.
I'm pretty certain that if there were a gang of malicious money hungry hackers out fluent in windows and hangul there they could quite quickly do millions of dollars in fraud without much effort.
On the upside the number of apple stores has quadrupled since I got here, of course half the machines in each store are running XP.
Also, someone will deliver a decent Korean meal for $3.50 or so.
Why wouldn't a pirate with resources just do the old fashioned thing and set up a fake account using some stolen info. At that point defeating the scheme becomes irrelevant.
The whole thing is that whatever system they come up with there will be a way around it however this one seems to be a good compromise.
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We are the Hell's Angels Capital of Canada (though the government recently seized their clubhouse complete with huge Hell's Angels logo). For those of you not familiar with the Angels imagine if in your city the local organized crime lords had a big banner above where they met saying "Mafia" or "Triads" and a store which sold merchandise (closed for a while now.) I suggest we track the crackhouses, grow-ops and hooker corners.
Having taught for a bit in Korea, I wouldn't wish their academic life on any child. The kids spend so much time studying that they really do nothing else. There is no way a fifth grader should be in extra tutoring academies until 9 at night, then have to go home and do homework. They are often stressed always tired, and most seem to have lost the ability to creatively apply anything they have learned. As far as North America goes it seems to be the exact opposite. When I went through school, partially in the US partially in Canada, I never really had to try. I rarely did homework and when I did I did an extremely half assed job, and I always did well enough on the tests to get a good grade in my classes. University was initially a bit of a shock because I really didn't have to learn any good student tactics to do well in high school. I did adjust eventually, but it involved actually doing some work. I won't even go into the extreme over coddling of kids that seems to be taking place these days. I do think however different people progress at different paces, and to think that geometry, which many students could learn easily in fourth grade, should be taught in grade four I think is a bit of an overstatement. Ideally, I think it should be somewhere between the two extremes, preferably with some emphasis on challenging the kids who need to be challenged and helping those who need it. Trouble is it's not just the school systems it's the entire society, being smart is not cool, children watching TV for hours a day is accepted and the norm. Parents often do not take their responsibilities seriously enough. If you have kids, and don't have time to spend with them on their homework, you are probably a very bad parent. I know economics does make this impractical for some, but for many the choice is between buying shit and making more money to buy shit, and spending time with kids.
It's really easy to say, "Terrorists routinely do this." I suspect there is some truth to it in this case, but I don't like the whole "Take my word for it. The terrorists are always doing this." being a justification for whatever the fuck rights they wish to trample.
After a year here I still have trouble figuring out the culture. My experience in the computing area has scared the hell out of me. Our school network is plagued with problems of which could be solved by 3 hours of a decent techs time. Instead they just reformat the machines manually from time to time. The CD drives which are required for some of the courses I teach rarely work, because they have put non tower cases on their sides no one would even consider putting them the right way. Our school grade book software employed some of the worst design I have ever come across coupled with a set of activeX controls which broke after installing MS Security updates (It stayed broken for any computer with the updates for about 7 months.) Everyone uses sites like naver and daum and thinks they are great. In fact when I go into the korean teachers room they are generally talking on cell phones and buying purses off naver. There are huge numbers of PC rooms in every neighborhood and most of them seem to be equally badly administered. Next to our school building there is a place called techno world which consists of 8 floors all but two of which are packed with very small individual retailers selling basically the same crap as the people next to them for the same price. I needed a firewire drive enclosure and out of the 40+ stores which sold computer parts and computers one of them had one firewire enclosure. I'm pretty certain that if there were a gang of malicious money hungry hackers out fluent in windows and hangul there they could quite quickly do millions of dollars in fraud without much effort. On the upside the number of apple stores has quadrupled since I got here, of course half the machines in each store are running XP. Also, someone will deliver a decent Korean meal for $3.50 or so.
Why wouldn't a pirate with resources just do the old fashioned thing and set up a fake account using some stolen info. At that point defeating the scheme becomes irrelevant. The whole thing is that whatever system they come up with there will be a way around it however this one seems to be a good compromise.