Father’s Regret

By Oh Young-jin

Assistant Managing Editor

For a year or so, it has almost become a habit of mine to step outside my apartment in the middle of the night and watch my neighborhood from the corridor.

The view I take in is a simple still painting ― dark contours of rows of high-rise apartment buildings that are only interrupted by dots of light that come from some of the windows.

I am pretty sure that those bright dots belong to rooms where high school seniors study for college exams or doze off with the lights on, because my son is one of them.

There could be hundreds of thousands of such dots across the country on any given night, considering the number of applicants aspiring to enter college or wishing just to squeeze in. This year's seniors took the standardized tests last week, many of them are now preparing for and taking a second round of interviews and essays administered by colleges.

I don't mind the long hours they spend in schools, cram institutes and at home studying, although I feel sorry to see their sagged shoulders and drowsy eyes. I consider this period an important part of an initiation process on the path to adulthood.

What bothers me, however, is their purpose of collective endeavor.

In my time, college education was a ticket to a better life. The priority then was going to law, business, medical and engineering schools that guaranteed fat paychecks after graduation.

The state led this rat race through a ``cookie cutter'' system that mass-produced college graduates needed for national economic development on a fast track. Individualism was sacrificed in the process.

Teachers, being under the gun with the responsibility of cramming knowledge into the craniums of students, had to go for the whole class at the expense of individual students and for a few elite.

Students who were bound to bloom late or those with different sets of gifts were ignored, aimlessly spending hours in classroom or on the prowl in streets.

This system, however, has worked well for the country, an army of college graduates pulling it out of poverty and pushing it into the ranks of advanced nations. Now, those foot soldiers of the country's industrialization are promoted to generals leading the global conglomerates or in key government positions, although some of them have turned out to be crooks.

With the beneficiaries of the current system in power, the prevailing attitude about our children's education is ``Why fix it when it's not broken?'' This attitude serves as a crosscurrent that has thwarted so many attempts by one administration after another to bring about changes to the national education system.

Now, class sizes have become smaller because of low birthrates and a multitude of schools sprouting across the country thanks to a higher standard of living than that in my time. From what I have learned, however, the system of education, starting with memorization and climaxing with the rat-race-like college exams remains virtually the same as it was in my time, except for a crazy-quilt patchwork of unsuccessful attempts to fix the system.

In a high school senior classroom, it is common that half of the students sleep, with a teacher talking to the other half. After school, only the survivors go to private learning institutes, come back home after midnight and study more.

One question looms: Is this system relevant for the nation's future?

The affluent class already cast their votes with their feet, sending their children to America and Europe, which they believe to offer a better learning environment. The parents who can't afford to send their children overseas or fail to provide them with better prep courses have their heads bowed in shame and frustration.

Looking at Korea tumbling down in the global ranks in economic size, I can't help but think that the time to fix the system has long been overdue, if only for the purpose of rejuvenating the economy and making it competitive again.

For reference, I would like to see a new system based on the combination of two competing characteristics ― respecting students' individual needs and providing them with equal opportunities. For my son, in the meantime, I regret telling him one too many times to ``Do some studying.''

foolsdie@koreatimes.co.kr