Korean Education Problems

768 Words2 Pages

In today’s society, education has become one of the biggest parts of people’s lives. In South Korea, studies have shown that the number of hours spent studying by students every day is 3hours longer than those students in other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. This demonstrates the social aspect of pressure of achieving perfect grades and a higher level of education (“Korean Youth Study Longest Hours”, Aug. 10, 2009 ). Also, Korean students have suffered very high rates of stress due to pressure from parents of receiving high academic scores. This ongoing problem of an excessive education which each student in South Korea has to withstand, not only hurts students physically, it also hurts them mentally. This may explain why there is such a high number of suicidal rates among youth in South Korea. The suicide rate for every 100,000 people is 27.4 (“Youth Suicides in South Korea”, Sep. 10, 2013). It is very ironic because people get an education to gain confidence, achievement, creativity, to learn how to respect and to learn to be with others, and most importantly to be happy. Yet, the reality in South Korea is drastically different as shown here. That is the reason why the Korean education system needs solutions to deal with these problems. First one of the biggest problems is the amount of pressure placed on students to …show more content…

In fact, back in 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal, South Korean parents spent “$18 billion” to pay for private tuition. In an average household of 2 children, more than 10 percent of monthly income ($3,946) is spent on tutors to try and give their children advantages in standardized exams based on government data (Kwaak, Aug. 28, 2014). As a result, students who don’t have wealthy parents cannot receive extra help through private education. A huge gap in educational opportunities occur because of the status of

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