korea’s education system

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: korea’s education system 🏫 

sky castle already braved me for the intense schooling culture in south korea, but i still believed it was a bit of an exaggeration. i couldn’t fathom families falling apart over a grade dropping from an a to b, or studying literally 24/7. ✍️ 

turns out it wasn’t a huge exaggeration at all. behind the flashing lights and beauty of seoul, the students are working themselves to the bone. earlier, i touched on the surprisingly huge student population everywhere i turn in seoul, and with that also comes the realities of korea’s education system laid out in front of me in plain sight.

3 moments come to mind when i had to double-take and consider the visual representation of korea’s schooling culture:

• i walked into a bookstore and all of the shelves were full of school workbooks and textbooks. nothing else except for one tiny shelf with manga.

• i was in a café sitting across from a mother and her daughter and she was being tested on korean grammar with the promise of the strawberry croffle sitting in front of her only if she answered everything correctly (keep in mind it is the holidays for school in korea). 🧇 

• checking out a pc cafe and noticing dozens of students inside sleeping over countless textbooks, calculators, laptops and energy drinks. you might think, “yeah, sounds like typical college to me,” but these were middle schoolers.

caroline and i met up in sejong yesterday and we were theorizing why this is. here’s what my hypothesis is as to why the culture revolving around education is so intense: korea’s natural resources are quite low — they don’t have prominent agriculture, mining, fishing or oil industries. their largest production comes from electronics and automobiles, which generate from human capital. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 

human talent and individual potential drive a lot of korea’s economy which is why the expectations are so high — failure is not an option, because an individual is then rendered useless to the nation.

just a theory! 😋 

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