School is so hard in Korea

I haven't yet done a post about the school system here in Korea. But after today I think I'll give a little bit of insight to the people back home.

Yesterday, I had my morning conversation class work on an activity about giving advice to teens about problems they have in their lives. We ended up having a really good discussion and the students liked the activity. So this morning when I got to class my computer wasn't working so I decided to build off of yesterdays activity. I told the students to write about a problem they were facing, present it to the class and we would discuss it and give each other advice. My first 3 speakers all were worried about going to high school (they graduate middle school this year). And they didn't have the usual worries that American kids have. Like "I wonder if I'll make a lot of friends" or you know just being nervous about the new environment. Usually American students are more excited than nervous, there are so many parties, and big football and basketball games, so many extra curricular activities and so many new people.

But all I heard today were things like "I'm scared because girls usually drop out of math in high school because its too hard. If I don't do well, all of my hopes and dreams will be gone because I won't qualify to be a diplomat when I grow up". So of course I asked what if anything they were excited about. You know, being more independent, more social activities etc....."Opsoyo" which means it 'doesn't exist or don't have' in Korean. When students don't have their work in class they say "opso". That's pretty much the status of their social lives as well. I mean you do have some students that don't care much about school or certain subjects but that's a pretty small percentage.

No wonder Koreans my age, for the most part don't do much at all and are not very social. I don't think they've developed the skills plus they're probably so tired from working so hard as students and finally have time to sleep and relax. Its good and bad I guess, we could learn to work harder and maybe they could learn to relax.