The Pressure to Learn (Or Rather, to Pass)

I work with ESL students at my middle school in Provo, Utah, and I have a South Korean student who is so pressured to learn English from home. He says his dad says he's stupid because he is in a smaller group with me, rather than with the regular class, never mind the fact that he just came here 6 months ago and barely gets by with English. I find that I don't understand him and so I sought more information. This essay is wonderful--I realize now that I need to try a different approach with him because of the pressure he's getting from home and inside his head. The thing I can't figure out is whether I should take advantage of the emphasis his family places on learning English and give him more to do and learn, or if I should back off and let him learn at his own pace. Any ideas?


The following is an excerpt from J. M. Beach's new book, Children Dying Inside: Education in South Korea.
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Children-Dying-Inside-Critical-Education/dp/1466269677/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316276963&sr=1-1
e-book:  http://www.amazon.com/Children-Dying-Inside-Education-ebook/dp/B005NRR6BQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316620
He presents some wonderful insights on the pressures that Korean parents in Korea, and thus in America, too, place on their students. 

The most serious flaw with private education, and with “education fever” more broadly in Korea, is the damage done to children. Korean culture places a lot of emphasis on exams and college placements, which creates a "pressure-cooker atmosphere."[38] Thus, most hagwons use a "teach-for-the-test" curriculum that focuses on the memorization of information, standardized multiple-choice tests, and test-taking techniques. Korean students rarely understand the information being taught to them, they are not taught to critically analyze information, and they cannot apply information to other contexts. Students simply become "expert memorizers" of "decontextualized" facts that can only be used to take standardized tests.[39] This teach-for-the-test curriculum "stifle[s] creativity, hinder[s] the development of analytical reasoning, ma[kes] schooling a process of rote memorization of meaningless facts, and drain[s] all the job out of learning."[40] High stakes exams also leads to widespread cheating, grade inflation, and outright bribery.[41]

But there is a much more serious problem for students. Hagwons take up a lot of extra time for classes and homework, add additional pressure for academic performance, and induce more stress on already overburdened students. Students already spend a lot of time studying for regular school exams, but the addition of hagwons and private tutors takes up a lot of time during the week, leaving most students with little to no free time. Students routinely are in school, studying, or engaged in private education for up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. One student explained, "I have to get up at 7 in the morning. I have to be at school by 8 and lessons finish at 4. Then you go to a hagwon and when you arrive home, it's around 1 o'clock in the morning."[42] The Korean Teachers and Education Worker's Union claims that high school students sleep on average 5.4 hours a day, although a recent academic study found that the average sleep time was slightly higher, around 6.5 hours a day.[43] The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs has issued warnings about student's irregular meals and lack of sleep. About 40 percent of elementary and middle school students skip meals because they lack a break in their busy daily schedule.[44] There is a popular student proverb, "If you sleep for four hours a night, you'll get into the college of your choice - if you sleep for five hours, you fail."

This pressure to perform leads to serious physical harm and psychological distress. Parents and teachers routinely beat students that do not perform well academically. A study published in 1996 found that "97 percent of all children reported being beaten by parents and/or teachers, many of them frequently."[45]Many students turn to suicide as the only escape from this relentless pressure to perform. Statistics are not routinely kept on this issue, but limited data are frightening. Around 50 high school students committed suicide after failing the college entrance exam in 1987. An academic study published in 1990 revealed that "20 percent of all secondary students contemplated suicide and 5 percent attempted it."[46] And the problem is only getting worse. Two recent surveys found that between 43-48 percent of Korean students have contemplated suicide. From 2000 to 2003 over 1,000 students between the ages of 10 and 19 committed suicide. Families also suffer. In 2005 a father was so distressed over his son's bad grades that he torched himself, his wife, and their daughter outside his son's school in shame.[47]