Countries fall into three broad categories based on their Education Index: high , medium , and low human development. The 2007/2008 edition of the Human Development Report was published on November 27, 2007; in Brasília, Brazil. http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/7.html {| style=”width: 100%;” |- style=”vertical-align: top;” | style=”width: 100%;” | |} ——– (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: A graph showing South Korea’s GDP (nominal) growth from 1960 to 2007. Figures are in billion US Dollars. Graph produced using Microsoft Excel 2007. Transparent flag of South Korea in the background derived from Wikimedia Commons. All data sourced from NationMaster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is an excellent blog written by Gideon Rachman in the FT. It’s short and recommended reading. Check it out!
The dark side to the South Korean miracle | The World.
Once again this article highlights the pressure on young people. For many families education is still the key for their children’s future. Whether it’s private tutors in Korea or school fees in the UK, the pressures are enormous. The education model used to to work well and was harnessed to the American Dream, which now has the equivalent in other countries like China. However, austerity has brought a shocking reality check, with many youngsters now questioning the wisdom of incurring huge student loans with limited job prospects.
Despite austerity, the children of wealthy, privileged and well connected families still secure first rate education, followed by open doors for jobs in the professions, business and politics. Yet for ordinary families and their children it has been a sad and shocking reality check. Also many students seem to be overqualified in theory and light on experience of life and people. I have started to ponder the following question:
How should we get more value out of the billions of Dollars spent on education?
Any thoughts?
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Looking back this is worth a read. It’s one of our most popular blogs.
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For ordinary people everywhere the cost versus the benefits of a University education given the lack of interesting and well paid jobs in a world where computers are destroying them is becoming a shock.
One can draw a graph starting in 1960 which shows the advent of mainframes, then desktop PCs, then laptops, then PDAs and tablets, then mobile phones and soon Google Glasses.
At each point on the graph, roughly every 10 years we can see massive reductions in manual workers, typists, clerical staff and middle managers.
At some point, we will get to a stage where with robotics, cybernetics and AI we will only have jobs for very intelligent people with non replacable skills and the question will then be what to do about those who cannot do the work that is available.
Judeo Christian ethics says that we must care for them but if the super-wealthy have cornered most of the wealth there is no money to pay for our ethics and “do-goodery” even in a strong export led economy like South Korea.
The Hitlerite solution would be to kill them but there is a better way than just warehousing them on the dole as we do in the UK or depressing them with menial work as the Koreans must be doing.
The dark side for Korea is the pressure on schoolchildren of what used to be a 17 hour school-day which has been reduced to 12 and the fact that no-one on the planet works as hard as a Korean and by a very long margin.They like us will need to create vocational education and business boot-camps for less academically inclined youngsters to get their young people into business and they will need to improve language skills so that young Koreans can “swarm out” just as the Chinese are encouraging their people to do.
The Korean education system at state level is 2nd in the world whereas the UK’s is 44th, so whereas the UK has a mountain to climb and zero growth, stagnation and practically no exports the Koreans with a few changes at least have a fighting chance.
The UK has its dark side with the two stooges, Cameron and Osborne, presiding over a sullen electorate which by and large disbelieves them, mounting poverty ,food bank expansion, the rise of a feral underclass, growing inequality between those at the top wetting their beaks and those on average wages and a Europe which is still going nowhere.
Whilst I would not change places with a Korean I think they are better placed to solve their problems than we are.