왜 그래?

Disclaimer: I have limited knowledge of and very little right to judge The Korean Education System.

Also, please note that when I say "The Korean Education System," I don't mean the teachers around me. A few of the teachers at my school have written off our students, but a large number of the teachers I know well are doing everything in their power to help our students succeed within the system they are required to teach. It's not their fault the system is faulty. (see disclaimer)

But when my favorite students - the diligent, considerate, funny, eager, creative, lovely ones - tell me how their education has failed them, I cannot forgive it. I cannot forgive the system that has made it impossible for my students to achieve their dreams - or, at the very least, has made them believe that it is impossible for them to achieve their dreams.

The Korean education system is changing, at least a little. There is a growing belief (or so I have perceived) that self-expression and active production (rather than massive amounts of rote memorization) are important elements of learning. But it's not changing enough or fast enough to open the door for most of my students.

신철 (Shin-Chul) and I take the same bus home, and his walk was slow and depressed when I caught him on the way to the bus stop today. He'd gotten 100% on his English semester exam - I'd given him chocolate - but the exams our school gives out are ridiculously easy compared to the college entrance exams he'll have to take in December, and he knows it. It doesn't matter that all his final exam scores were above 90%, and it doesn't matter that he's at the top of our school. The only thing (the only thing!) that matters is his score on the 수능, Korea's hell-version of the SAT.

He's so worried, so depressed about the little time he has left to study for the test (most Korean students start preparing for the exam 4 years in advance), and it makes me so sad, because he's such a lovely student and such a wonderful human being. He's told me that he wants to be a teacher, and that he wants to teach his students differently than he was taught, so that he can find out and encourage their dreams.

I want him to succeed so much. If any of my students have what it takes to pass the extremely competitive teaching exam (in which the chances are quite literally about 1 in 1000 of being selected as a public school teacher), it's 신철. But in all honesty, it's likely that he won't pass. He knows that, too - but he's still trying really hard. It's so unfair that this student - who has experienced for himself the ways in which The Korean Education System doesn't work, who wants to change the system to benefit future generations of Korean students, who knows what needs to be changed - probably won't be able to get past the exams required to participate in the system.

I have a ridiculous soft spot for 신철, I'll admit that to you. I might even idolize him a little bit. It's just that he's so good - though admittedly I probably don't know him very well on the whole - but I've never seen him be anything other than hard-working and kind and generous, with me, with his other teachers, and with his fellow students.

But 신철 is by far not the only student with this dilemma. If I were to put my students into groups, a lot of them would be in the 신철 group, the motivated-students group. There's 경준 and 희만 and 서정 and 승민 and 승화 and 홍범 and 무석 and 선우 and 성권 and others that I won't name and many others that I don't know by name and only by their oh-so-eager faces.

What can I do for them? (Not to negate the question of "What can I do for the other students, the ones who are not motivated [to study]?" - it's just that the motivated students are the ones most on my mind today.) I want them all to achieve everything they are working so hard for, how can I help them?

Today I put my signature on a contract for August 25, 2010 - August 24, 2011.