Open+letter-first+draft

Minkyung Jung English 103 Section Fall 2010 Matthew Hartman ** Dear Minister of Korea Education **  Hello, Minister  This is Minkyung Jung, college student in education major. Nowadays, I study in America to become a good teacher for our Korean students, who is the future of our country. Here, in America, the weather is really cold I feel quite like that winter already come in here. I heard that Korea is quite cold these days too. I can feel Korea coldness from the news which says that KSAT(Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test) will soon come. As I know, it is November 18th. As something like Jinx, every year when our children take a KSAT it was the coldest day in that year. I think it is because of children’s cold heart of worrisome and competitive. I already worry about how many children will decide suicide and fall in despair this year.  Since I am not a high school student now, I can’t feel children’s heart as it is. But I know their worry: about grade, college, future, and job, despair, harsh competition and awful daily life which is always same everyday: study from 7am to 11 pm, because I was the same high school student 2 years ago, and I want to be a teacher who will share these pain together. When I was a student I really hated Korean education system, but I didn’t have enough power to confront the wrong system. But now, as a future teacher, I don’t want my children suffer from this wrong system anymore. So, now I am writing this letter to you.  Korea's educational system is awful. I always wanted to say like this. It needs many changes. I think the biggest problem is excessive competition for college entrance exam, KSAT. I know that this problem is not just related to education to solve this problem we have to change every social, financial thing in Korea. Because the importance of KSAT is due to the low rate of employment in Korea. The hardness of getting job make our children to think about going to good college. And the wrong system which does not evaluate person’s talent but the title of the college makes children want to go good, prestigious college like SKY(Seoul University, Koreyo University, Yeonsei University). The harsh competition starts from this. To send their children these good university Korea's mother do their best. They send their children private tutoring school or academy since children are 3 or 4 years old. And the private tutoring school's fee is very high. It is from $100 to $1000 for 2hours class just 2 times per week. But they think if they don't send their children to private school they lose from the competition for entrance exam. Because almost every student goes to private school. And our children go to 3 or 4 private schools after real school. So our children are really busy and don't have much time to play. Children are not machines made to study. Children need to play, run, love and dream. But because of the hard competition between other students they have to study from 7am to 11pm in high school with just ten minutes break time per hour and 1 hour lunch, and dinner time during all day. Sitting down at hard chair and desk and straightly seeing blackboard they continuously study. I think these situations happened because of the current examination entrance system which based on competition between students. In examination entrance system, the grades based on a curve, it makes each student think their friends as a rival, not a friend. Because of this competitive spirit private education is so popular in Korea. Parents are facing higher expenses for their childern's private education  In education students don’t need to compete with each other. They just need to learn and compare each other’s thought to accomplish their dreams and to change their own world. Wh en I first came in America, and take a class, it was quite surprise that American students don’t compete with each other. They just do their self by themselves. Thanks to this they can be independent and enjoy their life. They seem free and don’t feel pressure in their mind. I think we need to change our school system like this.  And one of the most severe problems is that a KSAT concludes everything. KSAT is just for one day. Students take a test about 10hours from 8:00am to 6:00pm. It is awful. Children can’t concentrate during that long time. It is really hard for students to take a test for 10 hours. If student’s condition is not good that day every effort that he or she has made until that time all goes away. Because of that after KSAT many students decide to suicide or give up their life. We need to change this. We have to evaluate our children by their effort which they have made for their whole life, not one day’s test result. And KSAT includes just learning like English, Math, Science, Social Study, we can’t evaluate students just by studying. There are a lot of children who has different talent in different areas. Because KSAT just evaluate children by studying our children do not have real P.E. class, Music class, Art class. They are all just for names. Our children can’t really enjoy their P.E, Music, Art classes. They always just study, study, study. Education’s purpose is making human more like human. But I think in this kind of education system we can’t make real human. We are making our children as a machine.  K orea education has many problem. But Korean think education is the most important thing. But these days, adults don’t know what a real education is. Real education is a learning which seeks student’s real dream. But to find education’s fundamental purpose it is not enough to improve education itself. I think to realize real education, we need reformation of all over capitalist society. Korean students also have a dream, but they even don’t have enough time to dream. Even they don’t have enough time to sleep. I want to find a dream for our students.