September 20th, 2007, No Comments »
That’s the question posed by yet another great BBC radio documentary, entitled Top of the Class. There’s a ton of fascinating insights, some of them pretty counter-intuitive, into the devising an educational system that maps to a country’s social structure and policy. A few unexpected facts from the program:
- Finnish students don’t start school until the age of seven.
- There’s only a 4% difference in achievement between the students at the country’s best and worst schools.
- Though it’s above-average, the Finns spend less on education than many other nations, including the US and South Korea.
I know I’ve mentioned a lot of these docs lately, but I’ve been really digging them. They’re exceptionally well done, and–at 22 minutes–an ideal length to listen to while, say, stretching, doing the dishes or sweeping the patio.
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September 2nd, 2007, 2 Comments »
I just read this article about the released South Korean missionaries’ somber homecoming:
Relatives of the two men held their portraits as they stood on either side of one of the remaining 19 hostages, Yoo Kyung-sik, who apologized to the nation during a news conference.
“We went to Afghanistan to practise sharing love,” Yoo said. “However, we were kidnapped accidentally, and caused the whole country to worry. We also apologize to the government.”
Good for them. Anybody who acts irresponsibly and requires their government to expend resources–particularly extraordinary resources–to rescue them ought to publicly apologize.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a rescued out-of-bounds skier or hiker apologize for their behaviour. Maybe they do and it doesn’t get reported? I also think they should pay every penny of the cost of their rescue. I guess that price tag would be pretty huge for those 19 Koreans.
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July 6th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The other day I encountered this unlikely success story from South Korea:
Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country. It handles more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, thanks largely to content generated, free of charge, by people like Park and Cho.
Daum.net, another South Korean search portal, comes in second with a 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo’s Korean-language service with 4.4 percent.
77%–those are Google-sized numbers. South Korea seems to be on the bleeding edge of a number of technology trends, thanks to ubiquitious, awesome broadband and, I gather, certain cultural inclinations. They are, I believe, the nation that plays the most hours of online games per capita in the world.
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