Culture Shock

Now that I feel like I'm pretty settled in, I guess it's time to move on to blog posts that are more about the observations I'm making as I learn more about the culture here. First of all though, I teach 3rd graders on Fridays, and today they were all taking a test so I didn't have any classes. But a few minutes ago, on my way back to my classroom from lunch, I saw one of my adorable 3rd grade girls in hall. She yelled, "Becca Teacher!", and when I turned around to say hi, I saw her running at me, arms stretched out, ready to jump in for a big hug...which is exactly what she got! Definitely made my day.

But speaking of kids, I definitely want to talk about the massive amount of pressure put on these kids starting from a very young age. On Fridays, I have to majorly tone down my excitement for weekend because most of these kids don't view the weekend as the same kind of release that we do. Most of the kids at my school go to hagwon (a private academy for further schooling) everyday after they finish school here, and are there as late as 9 or 10pm. They go on Saturdays and even on Sunday's for some of them, therefore, they have no concept of the weekend.  

There is tremendous pressure put on these kids as early as kindergarten to be the best in school and achieve the highest test scores. And with this kind of pressure on the kids, comes the same kind of pressure on the schools. Therefore, this doesn't allow the teachers to deviate from the textbook much. The kids take a standardized midterm test sometime in July in I think, and the teachers at my school are already stressing about it. Lessons are quickly becoming more and more crammed as it is vital the kids memorize what is in their textbook for the test. If your students score poorly, not only does that reflect on your school and you as teacher, but it also makes some students subject physical consequences from their parents; which is truly the worst and most heartbreaking part of all of this. A couple weeks ago I went to language exchange in which Koreans and foreigners meet up at a cafe and hang out. I was talking to a couple Korean guys around the same age and when the subject of education and kids came up, they all agreed that they didn't want to put the same kind of pressure on their kids whenever they may have them. But the harsh reality of the situation is that if you don't, you almost put your kids at a disadvantage. I do want to point out that Korea is by no means an abusive society, but in this sense the cultural differences are so vastly different, that it makes them hard to grasp.

In addition to the pressure put on kids in school, there is also a lot of pressure on girls to look a certain way. As Americans, we can certainly all understand this one, but the difference here is the reliance on plastic surgery. From as early as elementary school it's a normal conversation to have with your family and your daughter about what kind of plastic surgery she'll need when she gets older. In the US I think of plastic surgery as  more of a luxury, but here it's often a necessity. At home it definitely doesn't hurt to be an attractive person in the business world but here you may be blatantly passed over for a job for someone who is better looking regardless of qualifications.

I realize this hasn't been an especially uplifting post and don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things I love about this country and things that crack me up. But today it was feeling more interesting to talk about some of major differences.