Are there cram schools in your own country?

Hi
Here is a topic that comes very often in discussions with locals…
Your (us foreigners) education and schools are much better
Children don’t need to cram and to study all day long!
Ok, then can I ask you (all of you)
Are there cram schools in your own country?

No (U.S.) (except for perhaps cram schools/textbooks to help prepare high schoolers to take SAT or ACT tests for college entrance.

What is typically after school is called sports, whether individual or team, starting from as early as 1st grade.
Other after-school stuff includes classes that are not taught at school (usually elementary school age, as high schools may have clubs for these things), like robotics, acting, singing, simple software coding, etc. etc., or sports (again) at community centers.

It’s called being well-rounded.

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Yea there are.
I went to one myself in final year of school but only on Saturday mornings for specific subjects.

There are private full time cram schools but seen as schools for the rich but dim.
I heard there are more part time cram schools now but young kids generally don’t attend them as they are usually aimed at college entrance exams.

Like poster above there are robot and coding classes (clubs). CoderDojo was started in my homeland for kids.
After school sports is massively important and takes up a lot of some kids time. Both weekdays and weekends (weekends playing with community club teams).

All this being said my kids have access to much more in terms of clubs and activities and music than I did at elementary school.

Private or group tutoring has always existed in one form or another. Online classes aside, tutors need locations in which to teach their classes. So yes, the phenomenon does exist in other countries.

What’s different about buxibans (and their equivalents in other parts of Asia) is their popularity, their intensity, and the cultural idea that spending a very significant part of your childhood in a buxiban is perfectly normal, desirable and even necessary, not just for children with poor grades in school but for all children whose parents can afford it.

Your (us foreigners) education and schools are much better

To make a sweeping generalization, I would say they’re right.

Btw we often think of buxibans as strictly academic, because the main exposure foreigners have to them is language buxibans, but basically any school – other than a kindergarten, university or “school” in the strict sense – that teaches any subject, whether academic, artistic or technical, is a buxiban.

had to read about this sentence twice because i almost thought it was the legal alien’s own opinion. imo, you summed it up quite well. in taiwan, it’s almost required to send your kid to a cram school, no matter the grades or how smart your is kid anyways. if you don’t, you’ll look like a lousy parent.
in the west(or at least west europe), you might send your kid to some important exams preparations or after school teachings for underachieving subjects. but sending your kid to after school learning just for the sake of it, i dont think so. that’s basically just a daycare center for teens who haven’t got a home to go back to.

Bear in mind that in the bad old days here teachers would only teach part of the curriculum in class time. The remainder was taught in the cram school. So students were literally forced to attend cram schools.

I’m not making this up.

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There’s still not enough time in the regular school year for teaching the full curriculum (which means there’s too much crammed in). Hence kindergartners learn BPMF and some simple Chinese characters before they actually start school otherwise they will be behind on day one , the teachers won’t wait .
Same with summer break .

Agree as well a lot of cram schools main function are daycare centers with homework tutoring thrown in.

I remember a couple of years ago talking to a student and she was telling me how she would ask a question in class and the teacher would just tell her that she would learn all about that in cram school and never answered her question.

This is the scam that is Taiwan education.

Not schools, but private tutors for those parents that care and have the money. Larger cities of course have more options for those same people called after school programs which could be something or could be nothing but a baby sitter until parents finish work.

Maybe the mainlanders were onto something with their simplified Chinese? :thinking::thinking::thinking:

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It’s not as common as in Taiwan, but I remember these learning centers everywhere. Sometimes another person can have more patience with your kid than you can and sometimes kids listen to everyone except their parents…https://www.sylvanlearning.com/locations
I can’t speak for all of USA, but it’s more common for parents in the US to help and check homework. If a kid is falling behind, sometimes the teacher will ask them to start an assignment tracking notebook for us to know what to look for. Kids also have a lot of leeway in choosing their path from the basics to advanced classes. Their guidance counselor and I guilted mine into taking as many AP classes as possible so they would be more prepared for university.
Most of us do think that extracurricular stuff is great for kids for teaming and also exercise. My kids played baseball, were in the band, and also drill team Usually 2 hours of practice before or after school.

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No not really, just tutoring (mostly math)

Such places exist here in the UK, but they’re rare. The idea of “cramming” information into your head is (rightly) not considered to be a positive way of learning in Europe. However, I’ve found that after-school study centres, such as Kumon (from Japan) and centres that specialise in maths and languages, are appearing more. But they’re different to cram schools, less intensive and, I think, more useful.

We have continued (higher) education night/weekend (Saturday only) schools, all kinds of skills, professions, languages actually anything. But not cram schools. Some people go there to advance their career, others do it for fun (engineering, languages, vocational skills …). It’s almost for free, you can study for a small fee.

We have cram schools in the UK but, as yyy and others have pointed out, the cultural attitude towards them is very different.

Just to give an example I am in the UK at the moment and there is a Chinese family living two doors down from us. My daughter is friends with their daughter as they are the same age, 7. Although the mother doesn’t work the girl goes to summer camp four days a week. Although her parents are both native Mandarin Chinese speakers, she has a Chinese tutor twice a week. Her parents complain about her poor Chinese ability but don’t speak to her in Chinese. She also has a maths tutor.

Obviously, my daughter has none of these things and my parents find it all totally baffling. I’ve tried to explain it to them but I don’t really get it either.

I seem to remember seeing a television advertisement in the US for a Korean language school, in Northern Virginia.

My only experience with buxibans in Taiwan is walking past one. The one advertised looked pretty similar.

Where I’m from there were tutors and a very few cram schools for foreign languages, mostly for Japanese, Cantonese and Chinese.

Other than that, we didn’t have them cause we didn’t need them. We had teachers at school and parents at home… Those that didn’t eventually had welfare

Teachers got sign on bonuses when their students signed up too. And usually the teachers taught the cram school lesson as well. go figure.

Also, yes, in NY there are after school schools for math, STEM, and in NYC lots of Chinese style cram schools for competitive high school tests, for Chinese immigrant kids. The libraries are full of teachers tutoring year round.

That’s probably one big difference between east and west. West calls it day care, east calls it education. So in the West we have similar purpose institutions that are labelled differently and have a slightly different execution. But as with Taiwan, we also have real “cram schools” that are actually aimed at intense learning, but most “cram schools” are not so professional, so day care :wink: