Last week, 600,000 South Korean students
took an exam that will determine the future course
of their lives - the ultimate goal being to reach
the SKY.
In a country where students, not
babies are born, young children are prepped,
schooled, coddled and groomed to take the College
Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). From a tender age
children, and their parents, are shooting for
acceptance into one of the so-called "big three"
Korean universities.
Seoul National
University (SNU), Korea University and Yonsei
University are collectively nicknamed SKY. Getting
into one of
these institutions is
considered a South Korean student's crowning life
achievement. Not only will successful students
have the best academic pedigree in the country,
they will also have a strong alumni network that
tends to be biased in hiring and mentoring grads
from their alma mater. Even their currency as a
marriage partner increases as a SKY graduate.
The national obsession that revolves
around higher education is focused on getting a
near perfect score on the CSAT, along with having
top grades in school. Parents start their children
on the educational track early on in an assortment
of pre-schools that offer numerous early childhood
learning programs that guarantee they will mold
the brains of junior geniuses. Some are worthy,
many are dubious.
A college entrance exam
in many other countries usually generates only a
shrug but on CSAT day in South Korea, intensity
hangs in the air. Under government orders,
businesses reschedule the workday so employees
alleviate the traffic conditions for students
heading to testing sites.
The National
Police Agency asks motorists not to honk their
horns near schools and teams of volunteers and
special police units work as traffic managers. The
US military halts live-fire training and aviation
missions to give test-takers quiet time. The South
Korean stock market opens late and closes early.
This year, even the aggressive farmers protesting
the rice market opening agreed to mellow out for
the day.
In the lead-up to the test,
nervous mothers pray for that extra edge on the
CSAT. In the weeks before the exam, many visit
Buddhist temples with photos of their children to
be placed on the altar. They bow an auspicious
number of times. Christian churches also push
spirituality as a means for CSAT success by
organizing prayer meetings and candlelight vigils.
The morning of the test, teary-eyed
mothers kiss their sons and daughters as they
enter the school. Younger students hold signs
wishing good luck and victory to their older
friends. Slapped onto some school gates is
yut, a sticky candy that is symbolic of the
Korean verb that means to stick, a colloquialism
for getting one's name "stuck" to a top
university. The night before, some of the bolder
and desperate students rip off an "S" from the
metal nameplates on Hyundai Sonatas or Ssangyong
trucks. The "S" stands for Seoul National
University.
During last year's CSAT, there
was a spate of student suicides. This year one
student committed suicide in Seoul on the morning
of the CSAT. Numerous school-related suicides
occur throughout the year, with this past April
being especially tragic. A father in Gongju drove
to his son's high school and torched his wife,
daughter and himself with gasoline because his
honor roll son disgraced the family with bad
grades. All three died.
Statistics are
unclear as to how many students end their lives
because of education-related stress. Numbers from
the National Statistical Office indicate that more
than 1,000 students between the ages of 10 and 19
killed themselves from 2000 to 2003. In another
report supplied to the education committee of the
National Assembly by the Ministry of Education,
462 students (both primary and secondary)
committed suicide in the last five years. Two
surveys, one by the Korea Teachers and Educational
Workers Union, the other by the Korea Youth
Counseling Institute, found that 43% to 48% of
students have contemplated suicide.
Many
others are emotionally spent after they complete
the test.
James Kobes, head instructor at
SNU's Foreign Language Education Center, recounted
a conversation with one of his students: "She said
that when she finished her university entrance
exam she started to uncontrollably cry because
such a large mix of emotions, both positive and
negative, hit her at the same time. She said that
after she cried she felt empty because she
realized that she had dedicated the best years of
her young life to the exam and that much of her
identity as a person hinged on the exam. Upon
completing the exam, the force that had given her
life structure and purpose was suddenly gone."
Kobes likened this feeling to an
anthropological concept called "deep play", which
relates to gambling where the consequences of
losing far outweigh the advantages of winning.
"Some people become so emotionally invested in
games that they actually start psychologically
damaging themselves - as losing is more costly
than winning, such game players end up being
damaged even if they have an equal number of wins
and losses. Even the winners are harmed because of
the intense psychological cost involved in playing
in such an environment. I view the current state
of the university entrance exam in Korea as a form
of deep play: for some unfortunate students, the
costs of losing far outweigh the benefits of
winning."
The concept of "keeping up with
the Jones" exists in South Korea; what kind of car
you drive and how many pyeong (unit of
measurement; 3.3 square meters) your apartment is
provides for social envy and status flaunting.
South Koreans take it further and are proud of how
many supplementary classes their kids take, making
it a point of pride that their child is tutored by
a former SKY grad, or goes to the cram school with
the best reputation.
As authors have
literary agents for scheduling book signings and
musicians have agents who book concerts and
appearances, a new generation of South Korean
mothers has taken the role of educational agent
for their child.
They micro-manage every
hour that could be spent studying, whether a
weekend or holiday. It is common to study outside
of the home past midnight. Students have come to
loathe winter and summer vacations where they are
enrolled in "intensive" gulag-like study programs.
Having a summer or part-time job is rare for a
college-bound South Korean teenager.
Being
an educational agent mother sometimes involves
bribery. This year the Korea Federation of
Teachers' Associations surveyed 5,420 elementary,
middle and high school teachers across the
country. It revealed that 27% of teachers have
accepted bribes from parents in exchange for
giving their students preferable treatment.
Teachers' Day is May 15, an annual ritual
to show appreciation and to shower teachers with
small gifts. However in the past decade,
gift-giving reached a point resembling outright
bribery with some gifts of cash in the hundreds of
dollars. Now guidelines are set that encourage
parents to give teachers only token presents such
as sweets, flowers and trinkets.
Most
Koreans acknowledge that public education isn't
good enough for their child to achieve academic
success. The problems are numerous. A survey in
2004 reported that South Korea had the most crowed
classrooms out of all Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, with
classes averaging at 37.1 students in middle
schools, compared to the OECD average of 23.7. The
result of the perceived shortcomings of the public
school system created a massive market for private
education that takes the form of tutoring, "cram
schools" and coaching classes that are designed
with the ultimate goal of maximizing the highest
possible CSAT score.
The social obsession
to prime the student for the CSAT causes another
burden of the family - the cost of funding the
additional classes and tutors. The costs are
brutal for most middle-class Koreans, with an
average of US$700-$1,000 a month going to tutoring
and cram school lessons. The Korean Educational
Development Institute calculated that the total
private education costs have risen from 7.12
trillion won (US$6.9 billion) in 2000 and 10.66
trillion won in 2001 to 13.65 trillion won in
2004; the highest of all OECD counties in private
education tuition.
And though South Korea
ranks low on international TOEIC (Test of English
for International Communication) scores, it spends
an astronomical amount of money on English
education, which is also key in university
entrance. The Bank of Korea estimates the private
English education market accounts for 4 to 5
trillion won, along with expenses of up to 68.4
billion won for studying for TOEIC and TOEFL (Test
of English as a Foreign Language) exams.
"I view it's not so much about educating
the students but educating the parents as well,"
said Ham Joon-young, a Korean-Canadian educator
working in Gangnam, the hogwon (English
teaching center) epicenter of Seoul.
"The
problem is that most hogwans are run by
people who can't speak English. It's funny how
they are so accepting of such low standards. Since
their English is so low, they can't evaluate good
schools and then they rely on trends."
With such huge amounts of money spent for
extra education, the industry has attracted
numerous fly-by-night schools and shifty tutors
promising easy-to-learn programs. The ESL (English
as a Second Language) industry in South Korea is
internationally known to be one of the most
corrupt and incompetent for foreign English
teachers, with numerous complaints of extortion,
scams and overall educator malfeasance. Although
there is a huge emphasis on teaching Korean
students to speak conversational English, the
undercurrent of rote memorization prevails since
it proves the most useful kind of test prep for
CSAT, TOEIC and TOEFL exams.
The frenzy of
extracurricular private education has its
drawbacks, even through it complements the regular
public school education. In 2003, the United
Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child
deemed the hyper educational environment in South
Korea violated the children's "rights to play". In
South Korea it is rare to see teenagers climbing
mountains, fishing along a river or bicycling in
the countryside. Such activities are considered
frivolous for a future CSAT test-taker, and the
few hobbies that most students have can be quickly
squeezed between study sessions.
Listening
to MP3 files, text messaging friends and mastering
computer games are de rigueur among the current
generation of students. Sleeping is a popular
pastime but a student proverb says if you sleep
for four hours a night, you'll get into the
college of your choice - if you sleep for five
hours, you fail.
In August, Professor Kim
Gyeong-keun at Korea University announced the
results of his survey that revealed children from
wealthier families scored higher on the CSAT than
kids from low-income families. Kim theorized that
there is a direct correlation with the high scores
and the money spent on private cram schools. He
also noted that students with higher CSAT scores
tended to have parents with graduate degrees.
The current government administration is
obsessed with the division of the educational
haves and have-nots, a hangover from the 1980s
military regime of president Chun Doo-hwan. All
privately owned educational enterprises such as
tutoring or hogwons were banned then with
the goal to make a level educational field for all
students to take the CSAT.
In the 1990s
the ban was ruled as unconstitutional and the
market exploded with educators of every subject
hanging out advertisements promising high test
scores and superior grades.
This year the
government tried to alleviate the burden of cram
school tuition by offering equal-opportunity
tutoring to everyone. This spring it reinforced
the CSAT lecture series on the Educational
Broadcasting System (EBS), figuring anyone with a
TV can access lessons for free. It was met with a
lukewarm response until the government countered
that the CSAT would have more EBS-covered content.
Students are acutely aware that their
parents are spending huge amounts of money for
them to succeed and the pressure is enormous.
Without hobbies or accessible sports teams, the
stress of constant studying takes on twisted
forms.
Computer game and cell phone
addiction are newly minted psychological maladies
of the modern Korean teenager. A darker one is the
commonplace wang-ta, the phenomenon of
bullying for the sake of bullying. The name
wang-ta is given to a student who is
purposely ostracized by other students, forced to
be a perpetual outcast and object of cruel
ridicule and violence. Entire classes and even the
entire student body can take part in harassing a
wang-ta student. Children who are orphans
or have single parents are often candidates.
While there is the pressure of the CSAT,
there is also pressure in the classroom, the
constant competition to score higher than other
students. Although the CSAT is the most important
criterion for admission into the top universities,
students' grades are another key factor. The drive
to be accepted into the top universities not only
puts pressure on students, but also on high
schools, which battle for the prestige of putting
large numbers of students into SKY universities.
Representative Chin Soo-hee of the Grand
National Party released a parliamentary audit this
year that indicated that 60% of high schools
nationwide were inflating student grades and 22%
recycling mid-term and final exam questions from
previous years in order to make the test easier.
Last year's CSAT was the setting for the
largest cheating scandal of recent times. Students
in Gwangju used cell phones to cheat on the exam
by orchestrating a relay system where students
answered questions from outside of the test site
and text messaged answers to the test takers, who
paid 300,000 won to 900,000 won for various
sections of the test.
Authorities had
previous tips about possible cell phone cheating
but failed to act on them. Although the incident
caused a major shockwave in South Korean society,
it was nothing new. Earlier that spring, a ring of
test scammers was busted for supplying answers via
walkie-talkies to 83 transfer students taking a
similar entrance exam to top universities. And six
weeks before the CSAT, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper
reported that Koreans taking the test at Korea
International School in Seoul would use the time
difference to feed answers to others taking the
CSAT in the US.
For this year's CSAT, the
government took greater steps to reduce the
possibility of cheating. There were metal
detectors at some test sites, cell phones and
electronic gadgets were banned, handwriting
samples were measured against original samples to
prevent proxy test-takers and task force teams of
cyber-crime experts monitored Internet websites
that might tip them to cheating conspiracies.
With the stricter rules in place, 27
students were suspended from taking the test
because they entered the classroom with cell
phones or MP3 players. Under the new law against
cheating, test scores are voided and those caught
are banned from taking the next exam a year from
now. Cheaters also have to take 40 hours of
"character training". Their parents have formed a
protest group to argue their interpretation of
fairness.
CSAT results will be released to
students in mid-December, and then finally they
will know their academic fates.
James Card is freelance writer
in South Korea. He can be reached at
www.jamescard.net
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