Overall, education in South Korea is fairly accessible for all students, at least up to a certain point. “Almost 100% of the current South Korean population have access to primary and secondary education,” and around 80% go to college, even though less than half of them complete college. Education begins to cost after secondary education in South Korea, so it makes it more difficult for some students to be able to attend. Despite this, South Korea has a very high literacy rate, and many Koreans are either able to go to college or go into the workplace fairly easily/quickly after they graduate high school. South Korea embraces individualism less than the US, especially where education is concerned, so curriculums and classes focus more on making the students memorize sets of facts and concepts and less on letting them explore themselves and what they like or who they are. Mistakes are considered pretty much unacceptable in South Korean education and classrooms, so students suffer with trying their hardest not to make mistakes, rather than learning from them. Overall, South Korea has a very high standard for education and success in that education, and even if you don't agree with the tactics (as I don't), you can't refute the results. The US cannot compare in many aspects to South Korea in terms of education, so although I pity South Korean students, I also sort of envy them. Citations:
“Education in South Korea.” Sites DOT MIIS, The Middlebury Institute, sites.miis.edu/southkoreaeducation/diversity-and-access/. Kellenberger, John. “Teaching differences between South Korea and USA.” Reach to Teach, Reach to Teach Recruiting, 18 July 2013, www.reachtoteachrecruiting.com/blog/teaching-differences-between-south-korea-and-usa/.
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Being such a successful country in terms of its education, South Korea is looked at in awe by many people, however, there are grim consequences behind such success, consequences which are mostly suffered by the students. From a very young age, South Korean students are taught that school is the most important thing that they need to focus on and do well at, and a researcher interviewed by NPR “ties the demand for college success to a national drive to keep the economy humming.” Even so, those students need a break from such rigorous studies - “more than half the Koreans age 11 to 15 reported high levels of stress in their daily lives. That's a higher percentage of stressed out kids than in any of the 30 other developed nations that are part of the OECD.” Students in South Korea often go to cram schools after regular school to continue studying, and they may be there until late at night, leaving no time in the day for anything aside from school and studies. This cannot be healthy for South Korean students, let alone for their futures and that of their country, and this is something which I feel especially bad for them because of. Once I learned about this system of education, I immediately regretted all the times I had complained about having homework that took away from my Netflix time, although I do believe that my experience with school-related stress should be looked at with a different light than the experiences of South Koreans, since we're born and raised in such different places with such different qualities about them. Citations:
Hu, Elise. “The All-Work, No-Play Culture Of South Korean Education.” NPR, NPR, 15 Apr. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/15/393939759/the-all-work-no-play-culture-of-south-korean-education. |
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