Michael Horn, cofounder and executive director of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, detailed how disruption is playing out in South Korea and Vietnam after making an extended visit to the two nations.
For context, Horn traced the history of disruption beginning with transistors and described Japan’s tectonic shift. In the middle of the 20th century, Sony launched the transistor-based pocket radio. Afterward, Japan rose on the disruptive wave, graduating four times the number of scientists and engineers as the United States despite its smaller population.
What was responsible? The widespread view in the United States was that Japan’s education system was superior and the U.S. wasn’t keeping pace. Shortly after, in 1983, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” was published in the U.S.
But since 1990, the number of Japanese graduating in the science and engineering fields has ticked downward, in large part because the country’s economy has improved and youth are no longer motivated by a desire to escape poverty.
South Korea is riding the same disruptive playbook. With citizens aggressively striving to free themselves from poverty, South Korea is where Japan was 25 years ago. The question: Has South Korea succeeded because of its schools?
Horn showed a picture of a lecture-based model of learning in a South Korean high school. It’s obvious in the photo that most students are sleeping while the teacher lectures. Students here stay up super late and pay exorbitant amounts of money for tutoring at hagwons for the most customized education money can buy.
Horn showed a glimpse of students studying at 9:30 pm on a Thursday night at a hagwon in Seoul. “No wonder that they’re sleeping when in school; they’re up until the middle of the night,” Horn said. Now that Korea has attained prosperity, will its culture change?
The time is ideal: Korean students are tremendously unhappy. The suicide rate among youth is the second highest in the world, jobs are not plentiful for young people, and employers say youth are ill prepared for work.
Meanwhile, raising children in Korea is big business at $30 billion. Education accounts for 12 percent of consumer spending, and the birth rate is just 1.24 per woman, Horn noted.
Indeed, the emphasis in education is changing as Koreans see other paths to success besides college. In the 1990s, 40 percent of Korea’s high school graduates went to college; in 2008, 84 percent enrolled; in 2012, the figure dropped to 70 percent. More alternative and vocational schools are cropping up with the shift in focus, Horn said.
Innovations, too, are emerging in Korean schools. The soft spot for them is in the middle schools because high schools are preoccupied with final tests. Flipped classrooms and more interactivity have had great results so far, but blended learning isn’t happening here at this point.
In Vietnam, the economy is fast growing. Notwithstanding impressive testing results, skill gaps still exist. There are a growing number of private schools in the country catering to affluent families, which are similar to U.S. schools. Vietnam has a rigid, time-based national curriculum, which is not centered on learning and personalized learning. All teacher lesson plans require sign off by the government. A disconnect is apparent as Vietnam has asked: How do we get our teachers to innovate? Horn noted.
The massive skill gap has created big opportunities for innovation in higher education. Some innovations are happening through the Yola Institute, a higher education consulting and preparation school in Vietnam. In addition, RISE uses technology to provide English-language learning. Meanwhile, Intel is bringing Vietnamese students to the U.S. and starting master’s programs in Vietnam.
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