That's So Asian!
Competitive Asian Schooling: The Religion of Good Grades and Exams
As described earlier, Filial Piety has shaped much of general culture in Asia, and the translation of its impact with regards to parental expectations regarding education are very evident. The aspects of a rigid track, timeline, and hierarchy, combined with reputation value that schools operate on is a natural fit with the background culture of Filial Piety, and the result is a magnification of underlying forces, including competition and worth defined by grades. In such a cut-throat environment, aspects of intelligence which aren’t as straightforward to quantitatively measure, such as creativity, originality, and EQ or emotional intelligence are suppressed in the name of test-taking skills, rote memory, and application of existing rules and frameworks.
The more quantitative the rules are to define right from wrong and assign a numeric value, the better.
Parents play an integral role as they must care for children who are too young to exercise their own decisions freely. Having been put through the gauntlet themselves, they turn into hyper-competitive coaches, trying to best other parents and their children in a never ending game of chess.
Private tutoring, a service once reserved for the elite and wealthy, is now commonplace as a form of shadow education, where parents administer secret boosts to their children so that they can outdo their peers in the relentless race for higher grades.
Private tutoring can come in various shapes and forms, from individual sessions, to franchised centers, and even digital channels over the internet. The business has grown so much that there are even celebrity tutors in South Korea, Hong Kong, and elsewhere who earn millions of dollars each year.
Celebrity Tutors - let that sink in and simmer for a moment.
It has even reached the point where these diva educators have been turned into Korean Dramas, including “Crash Course in Romance,” which streams on Netflix - the phenomenon is literally labeled as the “BTS of the private education sector.”
Here in Singapore, parents chauffeuring their children to private tutoring classes on weekends is the norm - it would be abnormal not to. Exams dictate the trajectory of students and their probability of success, and they start at a very early age. The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a stressful point for 12 year olds and their parents, as it is a major fork in the road ahead. Do well, and doors are opened at the secondary school level. Much is at stake even before one becomes a teenager - a static crossover point in life’s pathway.
In fact, when our first child was born, I had tremendous pressure to put him into pre-school by the time he was two years old. Now in the US, I’ve heard of children as young as three beginning pre-school, but two was unheard of, at least in my head. Do two year old toddlers really need to start attending school, or is there pressure shovelled onto parents to start as early as possible for fear of missing out? Yet, I was surprised to learn that it is the norm here in Singapore.
“You need to start early, otherwise your son will be at a disadvantage compared to others.” We eventually put our son into preschool for the sole reason that we thought playing with other children and socializing with them was helpful for his development. This continued for a year until one day, he came home one day and said “Daddy, can I have new batteries?” I told him sure and asked what type, “AA?” His response shocked me: “The ones that go in my head.. I am tired and slow at school.” Turned out they were focused on teaching him the alphabet at four years of age, and he was getting stressed out by the pressure. My son was expected to learn the alphabet before learning that batteries don’t go into our heads.
In South Korea, students rarely ever go home once classes are done. Most of them go to private classes that run into dinner time. They do so in preparation for a major life determinant heading their way: the suneung. The suneung is the annual college scholastic aptitude test, similar to the SATs. Except in South Korea, it will make or break one’s career, and ultimately, one’s life. If one doesn’t do well on the suneung, the chances of getting a good job is severely compromised, which would preclude one from earning enough to save up for a house, which would result in tremendous challenges in finding a wife, resulting in no family or children, and thus a complete failure in life. As incredulous as that may sound, it is the prevailing mindset in the country. The suneung is so critical to livelihood that parents gather and wait anxiously in the streets while their children take the exam. Offices stay open late to keep roads clear for students, and there have been instances where airplane take-offs and landings have been halted during some exams.
Parents genuinely believe that they are doing their best by pushing their children to success through rigorous education and paying for as much ancillary support as possible. Students have been trained to accept, respect and not question why things are the way they are - it is all they have known since birth. This close bond between parents and children evokes strong emotions as they navigate this labyrinth of intense competition, preparation, and reckoning. These emotions, as we know, sear these experiences deep into our memories and into our unconscious mind.
All this translates into an intense amount of competition and pressure for children and students. Sadly, one of the outcomes is a skyrocketing suicide rate. Suicide is the leading cause of death among South Korean teens and young people, with much of the blame placed on societal and family pressures relating to education. In Singapore, suicide remains as the leading cause of death for youths aged 10-29 for the fourth consecutive year in a row.
A grim topic, something we will discuss further in a future article and episode.
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