MLC 110 Artifact #4 Korean Education System

[Sheetal Babu]

For my fourth artifact, I'd like discuss the Korean education system. Please refer to links below for more information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMwUwIi8a5s

http://vimeo.com/26833191

http://chronicle.com/article/For-Expat-Professors-in-South/128951/

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-10/asia/world_asia_south-korea-exams_1_students-regular-classes-cram-school-classes?_s=PM:ASIA

The education system in South Korea is no joke. It's very intense, competitive and driven almost solely by academics. The average Korean high school student studies between 16 to 18 hours a day.

Senior year of high school is generally referred to as "the year of hell." Why?

Well, similar to how students in the United States have to take SATs and ACTs to have even a shot at getting accepted at a college, Korean high school students prepare for the CSAT. The College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) is the most important test in a South Korean student's life. Unlike SATs, this is a sort of make it or break it kind of deal. You only have one chance to score high. This test is called 수능 (Soo-neung) and it tests students on what they've learned over their 12 years of schooling. Usually after the Soo-neung exam, students take a university specific exam called 논술. After school, students normally attend a 학원 (hag-won) or for-profit private institution for learning. It's like an academy or cram school.

(noh-n-sool). College admissions focus on academics more than anything. In the United States, colleges will look at your grades, extracurricular activities, rigor of classes, the essay and recommendations. Korean universities want who are good at studying with top grades. The three top schools in South Korea are Korea University, Seoul University and Yonsei University.  

The amount of pressure on these students is colossal. After doing some research on the education system, my question was, how does this accumulated pressure affect students?

 Korea is a collectivist society, so already encouraging individualism is not common. Usually students focus on studying whereas in the United States, the focus is on critical thinking and leadership. Korean students tend to have less or no meaningful hobbies because they spend more time at school than anything else. Korean students are nurtured to become hard workers rather than leaders. 

South Korea holds the second highest suicidal rate, just recently surpassing Japan. What does that tell you? A lot of students do commit suicide because of the added pressure of doing well in school.