The Sunday New York Times has a feature on South Korea’s “geese family” syndrome.
Driven by a shared dissatisfaction with South Korea’s rigid educational system, parents in rapidly expanding numbers are seeking to give their children an edge by helping them become fluent in English while sparing them, and themselves, the stress of South Korea’s notorious educational pressure cooker.
While this phenomenon is not new (it’s certainly not news to anyone living here; we’ve met several families who are either living this way already or strongly considering it) I was surprised by how many families are doing this. It’s no longer just the wealthy.
In 2006, 29,511 children from elementary through high school level left South Korea, nearly double the number in 2004 and almost seven times the figure in 2000, according to the Korean Educational Development Institute, a research group that tracks the figures for the Ministry of Education. The figures, the latest available, did not include children accompanying parents who left South Korea to work or emigrate, and who could also be partly motivated by educational goals.
The article refers a number of times to South Korea’s “pressure cooker” educational system, but I don’t think it really does a good job of conveying exactly what that means.
The average middle class elementary school-aged child here is in some form of classroom from around 7 or 8 in the morning well into the evening, often 9 or 10 at night, sometimes with a break for dinner at home, but often, especially with older kids, not. Few students attend just the mandatory public school. Most also go to at least one—usually several—afternoon and evening learning institutes (also known as cram schools) called hagwons (학원).
There are English hagwons (which are largely responsible for the high number of expats from the U.S., U.K. and Canada here on teaching visas), art and music hagwons, Chinese hagwons, math and science hagwons, you name it.
And here is where I think the article kind of drops the ball. The popularity of cram schools is often attributed to some idiosyncratic craze for education on the part of Korean parents. Reading stories like this one, it seems almost dismissive: ‘Those wacky Korean parents and their love of schooling’ kind of thing. (In this article, Onishi gets even more specific, picking on Korean mothers, as if Korean dads don’t have a say in the decision.)
While it’s true that Korean parents do place a high value on education–articles like this leave out the fact that Korean universities test applicants on things like art, music and English-language proficiency when these topics aren’t covered well (in some cases, at all) in the public school curriculum. So, if you’re a Korean parent who wants your kid to go to a good college (more on that later), you either need to be an excellent homeschooler or you need a big hagwon budget.
Compounding the problem is that hagwons are not well-regulated. Some are excellent while others are criminally horrible, but there’s precious little way for parents to judge the difference other than by word of mouth. Hence the way popular–and fiercely competitive—Korean mothers’ lunchtime topic: “What hagwon does your child attend?” (Jennifer, if you’re reading this, please weigh in in the comments for all the stuff I am leaving out or getting wrong.)
Hagwons are plentiful but they certainly aren’t cheap. By the time, a kid is old enough to take the college admissions test his or her parents have often shelled out the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in hagwon tuition, tutoring, camps, study aids and other educational supplements.
But, you might wonder (as I did), why the emphasis on getting into a “top” university? Won’t some students do just fine going to one of the less well-known colleges? That’s where Korea’s employment practices come in. Most of the good chaebol jobs are often held by graduates of the big universities—Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea University. Graduates of these universities also like to hire graduates of their alma mater.
It’s sort of conventional wisdom here that a boss who went to SNU will try to hire an SNU graduate or the son or daughter of one. (I used to edit friends’ English-language resumes and for the longest time could not understand why they kept mentioning where their parents went to school.) There’s nothing illegal or improper about this. Just as it’s not considered wrong for companies to ask you to submit a photograph with your job application. Jobs requiring customer interaction being reserved for the physically attractive. (This also accounts, I’ve been told, for the popularity of cosmetic surgery in Korea.)
The exception to the above rule appears to be graduating from a “name” U.S. school, which is also why so many parents emphasize English or try to send their kids abroad.
All of this combines to put an almost unimaginable amount of pressure on Korean parents and children. Kids spend most of their lives in a classroom, a good chunk of the rest of it studying. They get one shot at the common university admission test that will determine what university they have the potential to attend, which will largely determine what job they get and what kind of life they’ll lead after that.
Their parents, those in Seoul are already paying some of the highest prices in the developed world for food and housing, are stretched to the limit (sometimes beyond) to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on cram schools.
There are sometimes tragic results. Friends who’ve taught in schools here or in hagwons tell stories of students they know have been beaten by their parents for getting a bad grade. Each year, following the college admissions test, we often hear of students who commit suicide after not achieving a high-enough score.
When Onishi calls it a pressure cooker, he’s putting it mildly.
President Lee Myung Bak ignited a huge public controversy (and apparently made enemies in high and low places) after announcing the government wanted more English teachers in the schools and would require existing school English teachers to meet more stringent language standards (conducting classes entirely in the foreign language, for instance; something few are able to do).
It seems to me that the root causes of the “goose family” phenomenon (and the “eagle” and “penguin” fathers) are complex and will require not just reforming the education system, but also the university admissions criteria and the pervasive employment practices that heavily favor the wealthy and well-connected.
It’s sad to see so many families who feel that the best chance for a good life in Korea is to be had by sending children to study somewhere else.
Tags: education, Korea, news, politics, goose father
