Reply to NYTimes: In South Korea, Questions About Cram Schools, Success and Happiness

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Reply to "NYTimes: In South Korea, Questions About Cram Schools, Success and Happiness"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Korea is going to implode. They already have the lowest birth rate in the world.   It's a fantastic place to visit and live if you don't have kids.   But, the "cram" school in the US and the US education in general is a lot easier than in Korea. That's one of the reasons why people want to send their kids here.

[b]Yes, they are importing some of their way of life here, but in some ways, it's no different than parents who push their kids to excel in sports in hopes for an athletic scholarship such that the kids are stressed (physically, too) and get little sleep.  Same coin, different sides[/b].

-Korean American[/quote]

Great point. There’s no single “American” approach to educational priorities.

Different parents and communities choose to do things differently, in part influenced by cultural background, but in my experience, influenced even more by their sense of economic security, financial background, and class/wealth.

“We” in America includes everyone from low income/first-gen parents focused primarily on getting the kids off to college, to working class/middle class families hoping their kids will use their education to attain more financial security than they grew up with, to UMC families hoping their kids’ education will help them retain the security they have, to UHNW families with accessible generational wealth … and everything in between.

So of course these families will be approaching education differently, from pre-school to college and beyond.

And that’s ok! There’s no one way to raise happy, healthy, successful kids. Life is better when we choose what works for our family while giving everyone else the grace and space to do the same.  [/quote]

I agree it’s a personal choice. What I don’t really buy is the idea that success on paper or a sense of superiority automatically means someone has more innate talent, or that excellence comes effortlessly. Most of the time, there’s a real mental and physical cost behind it that people don’t talk about. Meanwhile, use that to argue about who's more worthy for the reward (in DCUM, it'd be college) is not convincing.

Success comes from effort, talent, and a bit of luck—but it shouldn’t mean sacrificing your mental or physical health or chasing it just for bragging points.[/quote]

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