[livinginkorea]

I've seen both sides. My first job was in a private school where resources were lacking and thus I had to photocopy a lot of materials or buy them myself. I had to use the board and classroom a lot to interact with the students. My second job was similar but my third job was in a public elementary school, which had a seemingly endless supply of cash!

Seriously they spent about 60,000 euro on the classroom and materials but as usual when they have too much money they bought things to show off. They bought 7 computers which sat at the back of the classroom, collecting dust. I would use them for my advanced classes which had a small number of students compared to my normal classes (14 to 40). Also they bought two air conditioners which none of the homerooms had (but I was delighted in summer) and a touch screen and project which cost about 10,000 euro. There were many things like that. They had a huge amount of books too, which I picked out for them and evenyually presuaded them to place them in the library, not in the English classroom.

Anyway, having said all that it was interesting to see the differences between the haves and have nots. The students don't have to pay for public education yet there is a huge amount of money spent on it here in Korea. Money that is going nowhere. They should spend the money on getting new teachers and buying better English books not on equipment to make the classroom look like a television studio but that is another topic of discussion here in Korea