It’s no surprise, then, that researchers found more than half the Koreans age 11 to 15 reported high levels of stress in their daily lives. That’s a higher percentage of stressed out kids than in any of the 30 other developed nations that are part of the OECD, or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
“It’s kind of alarming actually. If young students [are] not happy, we cannot guarantee their happiness when they grow up, so our future will be really dark,” says Kim Mee Suk, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, which helped conduct the stress study. She ties the demand for college success to a national drive to keep the economy humming.
“We don’t have enough natural resources; the only resources we have (are) human resources. So actually everybody equipped with higher education would be best for our country but not good for their own selves. So we have really a big dilemma,” Kim says.
She and others are calling for more play time and less test-based curricula. But watching from afar, Owenby says he’s not optimistic.
Students take off their shoes before entering the study hall. (Elise Hu/NPR)
“Even if policymakers were hoping to move in that direction, there’s such pressure from parents to try to give their sons, their daughters the best educational opportunity possible. And it becomes what’s often termed as an educational arms race,” Owenby says.
A race to succeed so intense it can have tragic consequences. And there are social consequences, too. Many parents say they chose not to have more children because supporting all the cramming simply costs too much.
Article Appeared @http://blackstarjournal.org/?p=4894