Cram school

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cram schools (also known as crammers) are specialized schools that train their students to meet particular goals, most commonly to pass the entrance examinations of high schools or universities. The English name is derived from the slang term "cramming," meaning to study hard or to study a large amount of material in a short period of time. Cram schools are more common in non-English speaking countries, especially in Asian countries.

Contents

[edit] Education

Cram schools are usually privately owned. They are prevalent in East Asia, where rote-memorization education plays a greater part in adolescent life. In fact, there are so many cram schools in Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, that they have become a de facto parallel educational system, and high school students may need to attend cram schools after regular school to master certain important courses, like English, mathematics or natural sciences.

Cram schools usually specialize in a particular subject or subjects. Cram schools that prepare students for high school and university entrance examinations are also frequently specialized to particular schools, and the staff may have access to previous years' examinations. Special cram schools that prepare students who have failed their entrance examinations (known as ronin in colloquial Japanese) to take them the following year are also common. Such students may spend up to eighteen hours a day studying to retake their tests. Students who attend regular after-school cram schools may study four hours or more.

As the name suggests, the aim of a cram school is to impart as much information to its students as possible in the shortest period of time. The goal is to enable the students to "parrot," that is, to unthinkingly repeat, information that is deemed necessary for particular examinations. Cram schools are sometimes criticized, along with the countries in which they are prevalent, for the lack of training their students receive in critical thinking and analysis.

[edit] Alternative names

They go by various names such as:

[edit] By country

[edit] China

Cram schools are popular in China due to the importance of standardized exams, such as:

  • High school entrance exam (after junior high, at 9th year of school).
  • The National College Entrance Examination, mandatory for college admission.
  • English language exams. Passing the College English Test (CET) band 4 and 6 is sometimes a prerequisite for bachelor's degree, and the certificates are important in job search. The TOEFL and GRE tests from ETS are required for studying abroad in English-speaking countries. The most successful cram school in English is New Oriental, which quite resembles Kaplan in the US (see below).
  • Entrance exams to domestic graduate program. Over recent years the competition has been intensified, partially because many new college graduates fail to find satisfactory jobs and seek post-graduate education instead.

[edit] Hong Kong

Main article: Cram schools in Hong Kong

Cram schools in Hong Kong are called tutorial schools. These cram schools put focus on the two major public examinations in Hong Kong, namely HKCEE and HKALE, and teach students on techniques on answering questions in the examinations. They also provide students tips on which topics may appear on the coming examination (called "question tipping"), and provide students some sample questions that are similar to those that appear in the examinations. Some cram school teachers in Hong Kong have become idolized and attract many students to take their lessons. These teachers are called "King of tutors (補習天王)".

[edit] India

Like in other Asian countries education plays a very great role in the lives of the young. And given the intense competition that young Indians experience because of the country's huge population, the need for a degree takes on a whole new perspective. Numerous cram schools—referred to as tutorials in India—have sprung up all over the nation. Like elsewhere here too these tutorials have become a parallel education system with the aim of getting their "clients" through various competitive exams. These exams are necessary to get into not only fields like engineering, medicine and law but also into India's civil services.

Some of the more prominent tutorials are:

[edit] Ireland

"Grind schools", as they are known in the Republic of Ireland, prepare students for the Leaving Certificate examination. Competition for university places (the "points race") has intensified with recent years: students wishing to study medicine, law or veterinary science in particular must achieve five or six "A" grades to be accepted. Some grind schools, such as The Institute of Education, teach full-time. Many others offer weekend or night-time classes for students in subjects in which they struggle.

[edit] Japan

Main article: Juku

[edit] Korea

Main article: Hagwon

It is common for Korean school-children to attend one or more institutes after their elementary school-day is finished. Some types of institutes include math, science, art, and English. English-language institutes are particularly popular.

Many native English-speakers are hired to teach at English-language institutes in Korea, referred to as English hagwons. The requirements for such a teaching position include a 4-year university degree, citizenship in an English-speaking country, and the ability to sign a contract for one year. In return, the institute often provides the instructor with round-trip airfare from his or her country of origin and a rent-free apartment for the duration of the instructor's contract. Upon the completion of this contract, employers are also required to award each teacher a severance pay equal to one month's salary.[1] This is awarded to all employees in Korea, not just foreign teachers.

Because of the importance of the university entrance examination in determining one's career prospects, students are under intense pressure to study long hours. The high school years, especially, are a time when students have little chance to do much except study. The Korean saying "Sleep five hours and fail, sleep four hours and pass" is taken seriously; for three years students typically begin school at 6 a.m. and finish at midnight; some students finish at 10 p.m. and go to hagwons until midnight or 1 a.m.. Students can forgo the 6 p.m. to midnight classes and self-study sessions but only with permission from both their parents and their homeroom teacher, and few bother to ask. The schedule lasts seven days a week and is rigorous even during periods of nominal vacation. It is not uncommon during exam periods to see students sleeping during class from exhaustion. Students are encouraged to conceive of themselves as being in fierce competition with their friends and peers.

Korean high school students suffer from high rates of depression and suicide; suicide rates spike around times of major exams. In 2005 students gathered in Seoul for a candlelight vigil in memory of friends who had committed suicide and to protest for shorter school hours and an end to the haircut policy. A significant number of them wore masks and asked reporters not to take photographs out of fear of being punished by their teachers; many schools warned their students not to attend.

[edit] Taiwan

Cram schools in Taiwan are called buxiban and are not necessarily cram schools in the traditional sense. Almost any kind of extracurricular academic lesson could be termed buxiban, such as music, art, math, and science, even if students do not attend these classes specifically in order to pass an examination. It's a traditional belief that parents should send their children to all kinds of cram schools in order to compete against other talented children. Therefore, most children in Taiwan have a schedule packed with all sorts of cram school lessons. But when they study English, often with a "Native Speaker Teacher", they are actually studying at a private language school. Furthermore, since this study is ongoing, they are not "cramming" in the traditional sense of the word, and therefore, these language schools should not be called Cram Schools.

[edit] Turkey

The "dershane" system is the Turkish counterpart of cram schools. Students, typically in week-ends (in many instances, also after the school hours, especially in the last year), are drilled on various aspects of ÖSS, the unified "Student Selection Exam".

A category of high school called "Fen Lisesi" (Sciences High School) is also widely considered as cram schools in Turkey. In the beginning, these schools had been found to promote scientific education particularly in the primary sciences like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. However the unified university entrance test exam system (OSS) structure transformed these school into intense test tutoring centers where students are trained for 4 years on taking the OSS test. Widely criticized in Turkey for inability to provide a well-rounded universal education or the primary sciences to students, the "Fen Lisesi" system have produced consistently the best OSS test scorers years after years, especially in Sciences and Mathematics weighted point groups.

[edit] United Kingdom

[edit] England and Wales

Crammers in England and Wales are almost entirely concerned with enabling pupils to re-take their A-level and GCSE exams, to better their grades and in many cases, to get into university. Some offer boarding facilities. All are expensive, compared even to a public school such as Eton which also provides many extra-curricular activities. The English crammer, on the other hand, achieves results through focus on academic work. Few, if any, organise any sports activities, for example. Reflecting the new industrial giants in the world, much of the clientèle of the English crammer today is Russian and Chinese[citation needed]. Sample crammers include:

  • Davies College in London
  • Surrey College in Guildford (closed, as of July 2006)
  • Cherwell College, Oxford
  • Oxford International College
  • Oxford Tutorial College

[edit] United States

The phrase "cram school" is considered pejorative in the United States, so similar businesses are called "tutoring services" or "test preparation centers." Some well-known businesses of this type are Barron's, Kaplan, Peterson's, and Sylvan Learning. Generally, such supplementary instruction is only used in the United States as a way to assist students who have learning disabilities or are struggling academically in a particular subject. They are also used by some upperclassmen in high schools to prepare for the SAT, ACT, and/or Advanced Placement exams. Unlike their Asian counterparts, however, these schools tend to stray from rote memorization and more towards vocabulary drills and practicing essay composition. College graduates will sometimes attend such classes to prepare for entrance exams necessary for graduate level education (i.e. LSAT, MCAT, GRE).

Review courses for the CPA examination (e.g., Becker Conviser, part of DeVry University) and the bar examination (e.g., BarBri) are universally taken by undergraduate and graduate students in accountancy and law.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Finding the ESL Position that is Right For You., retrieved Jan 28, 2007

[edit] External links