Our day began sith a visit to the Honseong County Mayor and the county administrative offices. As has consistently been the case, the Mayor was very gracious, sharing an overview of the history of the region and welcoming us. We toured the grounds of the administrative compkex and heard about the Mayor's ambitious plans for making county government much more accessible and attractive to the people of the county.
Our teams then divided up to visit with students in the local middle and high school. The Virginia team visited with classrooms of middle school boys, who were amazed to hear about the short American school day and lack of nearly-required academy tutoring every day. Middle school boys are the same in many ways around the world!
The Korean schools are operated very differently than American ones. In Korea, many schools we would think of as part of the public education system are privately owned and operated. The private school we visited today has no tuition for students and serves all children in its service area, just as a public school would in the US. These schools operate under the same regulations as public ones and are required to prepare students to excel on the same academic tests as public schools. They appear, however, to have freedom to choose instructional methods. It's an interesting system...I wonder if it might work in the US.
After our school visit, the Mayor treated our group to a wonderful Korean lunch.
The first stop in the afternoon was a strawberry farm, where we picked (and ate!) our own fresh strawberries. What a delicious treat to take home to our host families. The strawberries were uniformly sweet and delicious.
We then visited the landscaping business of one of our host Rotarians. We drove to a unique village of newly-built traditional-style Korean homes. After looking at the homes under development, we stopped at the community center/library/town hall for this small community. A very interesting concept, though we're not exactly certai we understand tne concept and what it's trying to accomplish.
Back to town for dinner!
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