Education Series, Part 3: Attending Korean School
The following are the three major aspects of attending a regular Korean school (non-international brick-and-mortar schools) that I will discuss.
Cultural attitude towards education
Sports, music, and extracurricular activities
Mental and physical health
Cultural Attitude towards education
The Sooneung
In Korea, there are two ways to get into college. In simple terms, the first process, which was only established a decade ago, looks at an applicant’s essays and transcripts. Most students take the second route: the Sooneung. The Sooneung is the Korean college entrance exam that is only administered once a year. This is arguably one of the most important dates on the Korean calendar; everything that a student has ever learned in school since kindergarten accumulates to one exam. If a student happened to be extremely sick that day and performed poorly, he or she would need to wait an entire year to re-take the exam or matriculate into a less prestigious university.
Studying is important for Sooneung success. Sooneung success is important because it determines where you will attend college. Your college degree will likely influence your chances of getting a good job and a spouse. To a certain extent, your college degree is your reputation.
On Sooneung day, planes won’t fly. Many churches hold prayer sessions the entire day so that mothers can come and pray for their children’s success. Everyone goes to work an hour later so that they won’t contribute to traffic for Sooneung-takers. Convenience stores and cafes give special discounts to students after they finish their exams. You get the point. College is a big deal.
Study Centers
Study centers are everywhere in Korea. They are just as common as hagwons (cram schools/academies). Students spend almost all of their time outside of school in hagwons or study centers. In Korean, study centers are called dok-seo-shils. Study centers will usually call themselves “premium study centers” in English because, well, they really are quite fancy.
Study centers typically have two types of studying spaces: an open space and cubicle space. Within the category of “cubicle space” is a variety of cubicle types. I found it quite funny that for many cubicles, lamps come in four to five color modes. Cubicle rooms even have white noise machines. This shows just how much attention study centers pay to the smallest details of students’ studying environments. In addition to study rooms, study centers always have a canteen, eating room, and group work/tutoring rooms.
Personally, going to a study center has helped me to maintain focus and alertness. There are minimal distractions, and seeing others studying motivates me to work hard as well. It helps me to go to study centers especially because I can’t be in a physical classroom each day to receive stimulus from my peers. But for every study center I’ve visited, there has been a frequently reoccurring discomfort. The air inside study centers can become quite stuffy, especially in cubicle rooms full of people. If the ventilation system is poor, it becomes difficult to stay awake and focus. You lose your stamina. In addition, study centers often have dim lights or warm lights. Individual lamps can be adjusted for brighter lights in different colors, but generally, your eyes can become tired after a few hours.
It came as a shock to me the first time I found out that most study centers stay open until 1 or 2am. This implies that it is acceptable for students to stay up this late studying. By providing a place to work until 2am, study centers are welcoming students to sacrifice sleep for their studies. If your study center has poor ventilation and dim lights, it becomes even unhealthier to stay inside the same space for so long.
The day after I’d take an occasional all-nighter, teachers would ask me why I was so tired. When I would tell them that I had slept less fewer than 5 hours the day before or taken an all-nighter to finish work, they would be shocked and tell me that adolescents must sleep a minimum of 8 hour a day. I had one teacher who was horrified when I told her I had only slept three hours one day. I don’t enjoy staying up late, and I would only occasionally sleep so few hours when I had multiple tests or assignment deadlines overlapping. She was so concerned that she asked me if my parents and doctor knew about this. She even told me that I could sleep in her class that day.
According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, male high school students sleep 9.2 hours per weekday while female students sleep 8.2 per weekday. According to the Korean Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (KCDC), high school students only sleep about 5-6 hours a day. The first section of this image shows the average hours of sleep first, second, and third grade middle school students (about US 7th~9th grade) in Korea get. The second part of the diagram illustrates the amount of sleep high school students in Korea get; these averages are all under 6 hours of sleep.
Before I moved to Korea in 7th grade, I slept 8 or 9 hours per day at the very least. After I moved to Korea, I started to lose several hours of sleep. Because my classmates would talk about how they would sleep as little as 2-4 hours a night, I felt that there would I would be normal for sleeping past midnight. I would stay up late even when it was unnecessary to do so. When I returned to America in high school, I was very surprised to hear many of my friends say that they would sleep before 10pm. I had never met anyone in Korea who slept that much in middle school or high school.
There are study centers in Korea called “micromanagement” dok-seo-shils. I knew about these places, but didn’t know what the atmosphere was actually like in them until I went to one by accident in February this year. I went one of these micromanagement study centers assuming it was just a regular study center. I had heard it was very popular among the students attending the local public high school in front of my home.
These study centers have tutors that are ready for you at all times. You can ask them whatever you want whenever you want. The study center is also in charge keeping track of your academic performance at school. They will manage your time, study skills, and grades. Employees will also physically walk the study center every hour or so to check if you are concentrating.
There was a large TV in the open area of the study center I went to. There was a leaderboard of which students had stayed the most hours. I remember being speechless and gaping my mouth in awe at the screen when it said “Congratulations!” following a boy’s name for leaving the latest at 1:59am.
Something that made me feel even stranger was the study center’s “burning time” which was between 9pm to 11pm. 9-11pm is supposedly when students concentrate and work the hardest. I was in the open space typing an essay because typing since(making noise in general) is prohibited in cubicle rooms. The TV screen suddenly flashed the words “burning hour” and I looked around in confusion. The color of the lights changed in the cubicle rooms. In the open space, all lights were turned off but our individual mini lamps. This was supposed to help me concentrate and feel focused. I was taken aback. We were almost like dogs, and the center was the trainer shaping our behavior in different ways by the time of day. I left shortly after burning time began.