Problems of Korean Education
“SKY Castle (SKY 캐슬)” is a Korean drama which is going viral at the moment. “SKY Castle” follows the lives of a family in the luxurious neighbourhood called SKY Castle. They try to raise their children like prince and princesses by forcing children to be highly educated, and pressure child to get in to “SKY” universities.
“SKY” stands for Seoul National University, Korea University, Yonsei University, which is top 3 universities in South Korea. Their acceptance rate is below 30% and you have to keep really high grade in school, therefore, to get in to these universities, you’re likely to be needing an extra education after school.
To get into those universities, you have to get extremely high marks both school grade and Korean SAT called “Su-Neung”, which contains Korean, Math, English, History, Socials, and Second Language. In fact, the majority of the medical student at Seoul National University got Full mark or 1–2 wrongs in total in their “Su-Neung”.
“SKY Castle” illustrated the problems of Korean education extremely well and accurate. School in Korea starts at 9 am and ends at 5 pm. And after school, most of the student go to cram school and get extra classes.
So what is the problem of Korean education?
According to the OECD Better Life Index (or happiness ranking), the country with the lowest ranking is Korea, and the problem is in their education system. The reason why their happiness raking is low is that they get extremely pressured to be responsible for their own education. First, the definition of an education is to develop an internal ability and become more mature and increase the value of a human being. However, Korean education is called Cramming education, which is different from Canada and it’s a learning method that is entrance-oriented. This kind of education blocks student’s potential talent in other areas because it force delivers knowledge unilaterally even though the student is not interested in a particular area.
What’s the solution?
By reducing private tutoring, and not only listening to the teacher’s explanation but by making an environment that every student will be able to participate in class and engagingly ask questions during the class such as conducting a class experiment. Also, a student in Korea does not have the right to choose which course will they take because The student should have a choice in school courses because the student has the right to dream of their future by forming their personality and acquiring professional knowledge through the curriculum.