TIMEasia.com: Education

High Performers
Students in Asian countries still lead the world in math and science achievement, according to a test of 50,000 eighth graders from 38 countries
(Maximum score is 650)

TIMSS study 1999

Sources: World Competitiveness Yearbook 2001, IMD

COVER STORY
Back of the Class
East Asia's strict classrooms and well-drilled students were once the pride of the region and the envy of the West. But falling test scores and anxious, depressed kids indicate that serious reform might well be the only way to save Asia's troubled schools

Textbooks
History education is tainted with bias

Overseas
Some Koreans want their children taught in the U.S.

Viewpoint
Maybe American kids are all right after all

Class Note: Cram School's Kinda Cool

Doing Time: A Student's Day

School Daze

The Haja Center, an experimental school located in northwestern Seoul, is trying to put the fun back into learning. With a million-dollar grant from the city government last year, the school has created a laid-back oasis in a country where a popular saying goes, "Sleep four hours and pass, sleep five hours and fail." At the Haja Center, students lounge on mats or hang out in a funky playground. (In most Seoul schools, playgrounds are empty because students don't have time to play; 86% of kindergartners receive cram school lessons). Cafeteria speakers pump out dance music, and the school boasts facilities for filmmaking, Web design and even a recording studio. Teachers are called tutors, and kids use nicknames—like Oasis, Lithium, Gum and Chili—in order to avoid Korea's hierarchical honorifics. "It's a way to get rid of old labels and instill new ways of thinking," says Cho Han Haejoang, a Yonsei University sociology professor who set up the school three years ago. "The idea is to create a new self."

That's exactly what the Haja Center has given Lee So Dam. The shy 13-year-old spends her days drawing intricately etched faces. She wants to become an artist, and she dropped out of public school because her art teacher only wanted her to precisely render white plaster statues. "In public schools, kids are told how they must draw," says Japanese alternative-art teacher Hiroko Miura, as she watches one of her students throw great splotches of color onto a drawing pad. "But if you don't allow creativity in art, how are you ever going to find the next Van Gogh?"

The Pathumkongkah technical high School in a festering part of Bangkok exemplifies much of what has gone wrong with Asia's schools. Murals on the walls depict the modern social problems facing its 2,400 students: AIDs, drugs, prostitution and violence. In the eight monsoon-stained buildings, individual teachers have to preside over classes of more than 50 students. Class size continues to increase by 5% each year; there is a teacher hiring freeze. When asked to describe the good aspects of education, Pathumkongkah's deputy headmaster, Pethai Aowayatitaw, arches an eyebrow, giggles nervously and says, "Here? In Thailand?"

When Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra swept into office last year, he promised to overhaul the nation's blighted schools. Although literacy is high in Thailand, and in Southeast Asia the country ranks second to Malaysia on the percentage of GDP it spends on education, Thailand's students lag behind in skills needed to transform a factory-based economy into a knowledge-based one. "Students can't really read or write," says Sippanondha Ketudat, a former Minister of Education. "All they know how to do is tick a box next to a multiple-choice question." But despite his promises, Thaksin has done little to goose a bloated Education Ministry. The country has had three education ministers in less than a year—including Thaksin himself—and the current one is advocating more rote memorization and the reintroduction of caning as a disciplinary measure.

Some parents are so fed up they're pulling their kids out of Asian schools altogether. Clark Cui grew up in the Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen but he now shares a suburban three-bedroom brick house in Sydney with three other high school kids from China. The number of Chinese students studying abroad has skyrocketed: China ranked fifth among countries sending students to Australia in 2000. This year, it will have the No. 1 slot. "My parents didn't want me to go through China's entrance exam hell," says Clark, who hopes to major in software engineering at an Australian university. "And I like studying in a place where I can make jokes with my teachers and breathe clean air."

Most parents, of course, can't afford that escape route. Still, there are local alternatives. In Taiwan, the Forest Elementary School offers students a chance to study traditional subjects and still get a breath of fresh air. Located in a small wood about a 40-minute drive outside petrol-redolent Taipei, the school encourages kids to explore their inner mind through hiking, camping and getting to know local fauna. "Kids here," says school adviser Shih Ying, "have the courage to climb trees, to be different from others and to be themselves." For one lucky group of East Asian youngsters, the buzz of worker bees are a part of the natural landscape—not a glimpse of their future lives.

With reporting by Brian Bennett/Hong Kong, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Joyce Huang/Taipei, Chisu Ko and Donald Macintyre/Seoul and Douglas Wong/Singapore

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