Homework or Not?

The Finnish and South Korean educational systems are ranked number one and two in the world, yet they’re at opposite ends of the homework assignment spectrum. Louis Menand elaborates:

Students [in Finland] are assigned virtually no homework; they don’t start school until age seven; and the school day is short.

[South Korean schools] are notorious for their backbreaking rigidity. Ninety per cent of primary-school students in South Korea study with private tutors after school, and South Korean teen-agers are reported to be the unhappiest in the developed world. Competition is so fierce that the government has cracked down on what are called private “crammer” schools, making it illegal for them to stay open after 10 P.M. (though some attempt to get around this by disguising themselves as libraries).

— Menand (2012): Today’s Assignment in The New Yorker.

via The Dish.

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