Too Much Study

The question that all societies ask themselves about the methods and goals of a student education is a bigger on to tackle in South Korea. Academic pressures at the most prestigious university in Korea, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (also known as 'KAIST', a kind of copy of the U.S. famed MIT university) is so bad that this semester four students and one of the more popular professors there all have committed suicide. The professor killed himself because he was being audited for accusations of misuse of funds and the four students did it because they had trouble keeping up with course work. "Saving face", ah, that awful cultural mantra in many Asian countries is out of control in Korea.

Young people in South Korea are said to be a mostly unhappy group as they are pushed to try to reach a materialistic future dependent on study, study, and more study. A recent survey found them to be, for the third year in a row, the unhappiest group among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations. The Education Ministry in Seoul said 146 students committed suicide last year, including 53 in junior high, 90 on high school and 3 in elementary school.

Also, South Korea as a whole ranks first among O.E.C.D. nations in suicide and is routinely among the leaders in developed nations. Subway stations in Seoul have barriers to prevent people from jumping in front of arriving trains, and eight bridges in the capital have installed closed-circuit suicide watch cameras. Suicides of singers, models, beloved actors, athletes, millionaire heiresses and other prominent figures have become almost routine in South Korea.

Why so, one might ask? It probably starts with their obsession with academic success, those awful dehumanizing cram schools and private tutoring, and the endless hours of study Korean students must endure. Strangely, as in most Asian educational systems, students are brutalized with excessive study and demands until being admitted to a University, where in most cases, it's then a 4 year vacation from any study at all. The reward for being brutalized in elementary and high school is a free ride of play in college...except at KAIST, which instituted reform and demands to study as in pre college years that the students that may be too much for some of them to handle.

Too, what is the point in trying to achieve "face" if day to day life is unfulfilling and unhappy? Trying to live up top an image created by a study obsessed society is causing South Koreans great anguish. Yet the economic gains from that very system have been astounding in South Korea. It's something to think about as to how it translates in other nations and how they structure their educational systems. The educational trend world wide seems to be more movement toward the South Korean model of education, a high pressure, high stakes one.

But does that system neglect the human element too much, the part of the equation that says humans are a sum of many individual parts, and are not defined by a single criteria (educational attainment)? You tell me what system is the ideal one.