Korea has some of the largest classes in the industrialized world. Reading about this while researching for my site, I came across a few interesting discussions of this from an American perspective. I would be interested to hear about it from a Korean perspective though.
You can read the New York Times economics blog about class sizes in OECD countries here. You can read what the Center on International Education Benchmarking (a US based group that tries to bring in ideas from top performing countries in education to improve the US system) has to say about South Korea’s class sizes and more here. You can see the official OECD report on class sizes here.
There was also an interesting video posted on the Center on International Education Benchmarking’s South Korea page. It talks about digital textbooks as part of a paradigm shift away from rote learning. Technology is imagined as a way to circumvent the issue of large class sizes to provide more active learning and interactive classes. It is interesting, but to be taken with a grain of salt perhaps.
All in all, there is a lot to deconstruct from these sources. That is a project for later when I have more time. Consume the information critically.
