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.

The Game of Life

This Friday, one of my classes had done all of it's work and had a ton of time left over, so I decided that we would play a game. At my school we have a limited number of games, and due to the number of students in the class we were limited to a choice between Monopoly and The Game of Life.

The kids chose The Game of Life.

It had been a while since I played the game, and I had forgten how complicated and conviluded the rules are. I had also forgoten how silly the game is. No matter what you do in this game you will get a job, get married, buy a house, and end your "life" with tons of money and life experiences.

I do not know what part of this game I like least, and it is hard for me to determine what part of this game is the least realistic. Is it the fixed path that everyone walks down, and the set path that all the players invariably follow? The idea that once you leave college you immediately get a career? (I bet a lot of people graduating this year wish that were true.) The idea that everyone, no matter what they spin, get married at the same time in their life? Or is it that there is not a single great tragedy that can befall a player in the totality of the game?!

Irritated by the game, I decided to go online and try to figure out what idiot thought this game was a good idea. I was surprised by what I found. The game was originally created in 1860 by Milton Bradly as The Checkered Game of Life. It was played with a six sided top (dice were considered evil), and depending on your spin you would move up or down, left or right, or diagonally. This game bears no resemblance to "The Game of Life", but has a great resemblance to life.

It is non-linear, there is no clear path, and failure is around every corner. Not only is failure possible, it is likely. Furthermore, there is a "Suicide" square! As its name suggests, if you land on this square you die, and the game is over for you. This is the kind of game I can get behind!

I think we need to modernize this version of The Game of Life, and market it to children. It would be far better to prepare them for the disappointments that are in store for them, than to give them an unrealistic expectation of what life is and have them be disappointed.