By Shim Jae-yun
U.S. President Barack Obama frequently praised Korea’s education system with respect to the high degree of enthusiasm parents have to send their children to higher education institutes. Obama might have changed his mind, should he have read about the recent killing of a mother by her only son, a high school senior. The matricide was all the more shocking for the student’s heinous act of stabbing the woman in the throat and neglecting the body for more than eight months.
The unfortunate mother, who was divorced and suffered from depression, had excessive expectations for her son apparently out of a wish to compensate for her relatively unhappy life. Pushing him to attain the No. 1 score in the country, she used various punitive measures unless he followed her lead. She even beat him with sticks and made abusive remarks. As an excuse to make him a success she totally ignored her son’s human rights and disregarded his dreams, ideals and capabilities. She seems to have regarded him as her possession, not as a precious individual. In this sense, she might have invited such an unfortunate incident.
Most youngsters in Korea are forced to engage in extreme competition in a bid to advance to higher education institutes, namely high-level universities. In the midst of such a competitive environment, they feel various types of stress and depression. The problems seem more serious among male students than their female counterparts.
Boys between 13 and 18 are supposed to enjoy outdoor activities, which are natural for them given the tradition and history of humankind. From ancient times, were generally engaged in wild activities like hunting and fishing to feed their families while women were in charge of household affairs like cleaning, sewing, and feeding the children.
In this context, male students in Korea face a very “unnatural” environment where they cannot find enough time for outdoor activities. Even if they have time, they cannot find friends to play with as they are either in hagwon after school or receiving private tutoring. This is the reason why many of them are absorbed in computer games. Through the games, they try to find a breakthrough for their offensiveness inside, which sometimes is practiced against others in reality.
As such games are highly addictive many of them sit in front of the computers for a long time. This makes their parents, especially their mothers, furious, yelling at them to stop playing games and to return to their studies. As a father with a son who is about to become a high school student, I frequently encounter such cases when I am at home. At those times, I have mixed feelings toward my son. On the one hand, I feel tempted to join my wife in scolding him to return to his room to study. But on the other hand, I feel sympathy for him, understanding his difficulties in this unnaturally competitive situation.
Numerous similar cases are easily found in almost all households. My son sometimes recalls the days when our family stayed in Great Britain some five years ago. At that time, as an elementary school student, he didn’t need to worry about studying after school. What he always did then was throw the school bag on the sofa and go to the playground to play football.
President Obama might have cited the Korean case to encourage parents and policymakers in the United States to have more passion in carrying out relevant policies rather than highlighting the excellence of Korean education.
In Korea, curriculums are set with the only goal of achieving high marks for entrance to university. In the process of standardized education, the differentiation of talents between students is largely neglected. This is the result of a uniformed way of thinking without considering diversity.
Such dogmatic equalitarianism had been fanning private education and fierce competition for university entrance. Against this backdrop, both the students and parents have fallen prey to stressful lives and huge costs for private education. In short, Korean people face a hellish situation in terms of education and that is the very reason why Americans might not envy the Korean education system despite Obama’s repeated acclamations.