Korean Kids are Crazy

I may have to use that title more than once (and not just because of the alliteration). There are so many things about these Kids that are just nuts.

Today, I am going to talk about Korean kids and school. Don't get me wrong, I believe in education, but there is such a thing as overkill.

I should not complain too much, because I personally benefit from the Korean tendency to overeducate. I would not have this job if thousands upon thousands of Korean parents did not send their children to after school schools.

These schools teach everything from English, to music, to martial arts. For these kids school does not end when the public school lets them out. That is just the starters pistol for a battery of extracurricular education.

At some point you have to feel bad for these kids. They spend most of their day in a variety of different schools, where their primary objective seems to be to memorize as much as possible.

One of the most frustrating things for me to do is to try to get these kids to be creative. Every time they have to make up their own story, or imagine something new (ie. not look at the story we just read and copy it verbatim) they give me this helpless blank stare.

I was talking to this high school student this week at church who is "lucky enough" to go to this elite and exclusive boarding school. They wake everyone up at 6:30 (They use a loud alarm broadcast over the intercom to wake people up. Already sounds like paradise, right.) Then they go to class from 8am to 6:30pm. Then they have study hall from 6:30pm to 11:30pm. Then sleep. Presumably they let these kids eat and go to the bathroom, but I am not sure.

Competition to get into Korea's top three universities (apparently the only ones really worth getting into) is really tough. You apparently have to take lots of AP classes, and they only accept people who get 5s (for the people who do not know, the best score is a 5). On top of all that these exams are administered in English!

It is not enough to master a subject like Macroeconomics, you also have to be able to pass, with flying colors, a test on the subject administered in a foreign language! Like I said, at some point you have to feel bad for these kids.