EPTAs for Suh seems like he was trying to make under achieving students commit suicide. I really felt bad for these students does Korea not believe in failure? How sad many of the greatest inventors or leaders failed several of times before they achieved success if they were in Korea seems like many would have just killed themselves what a waste of talent really depressing.
Suicide in Korea - Page 10
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Hister
United States89 Posts
As for Suh seems like he was trying to make under achieving students commit suicide. I really felt bad for these students does Korea not believe in failure? How sad many of the greatest inventors or leaders failed several of times before they achieved success if they were in Korea seems like many would have just killed themselves what a waste of talent really depressing. | ||
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Elroi
Sweden5595 Posts
I'm very conflicted when it comes to this question. I do think that the best results come from students who want to learn because they are intressted in what they are doing. That has always been the case for me. But I know that there are lots of examples to show that the opposite is true. | ||
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Punti
99 Posts
On May 25 2011 00:16 Elroi wrote: I guess it is not a coincidence if Chinease and Korean SC2 players just leave the europeans and americans behind so fast when it comes to skill. They are just more motivated and used to working. By that logic they'd have to be good at everything they are doing professionally. But it's not the case. South Korea hasn't achieved anything special except their status concerning e-sports. And concerning china: Those people are ridiculous. Working their ass off for literally nothing. Most of them are poor and they don't even have the dignity to stand up. I don't think that is a good attitude. | ||
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berdy
United States4 Posts
It has also had more coverage in S. Korea because of the alarming rate of popular figures that have committed suicide in recent years. President Roh Moo-hyun along with 10 notable pop culture icons including actors and singers. I think we can all agree that suicide is disturbing no matter where it happens and what age group it happens to. It's sad in any language. Sadly enough though it is apart of the human condition. I think awareness is the answer. Awareness of who your children are, and what they can handle is very important. Medication, therapy, love, motivation, positive reinforcement, are all things parents and their children should be aware of. | ||
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gullberg
Sweden1301 Posts
On May 24 2011 16:52 Popss wrote: Oh please maybe my parents where just to nice to me but in terms of universities it really doesn't matter much which school you went to. They were being nice, because there are definitely times when it matters (depending on the subject though). | ||
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dreamsmasher
816 Posts
On May 25 2011 00:38 Punti wrote: By that logic they'd have to be good at everything they are doing professionally. But it's not the case. South Korea hasn't achieved anything special except their status concerning e-sports. And concerning china: Those people are ridiculous. Working their ass off for literally nothing. Most of them are poor and they don't even have the dignity to stand up. I don't think that is a good attitude. you mean besides industrialize at a rate that is unseen by very few countries. how many other countries have gone from nothing to first world in <30-40 years? asian americans have achieved higher median income, higher educational status, and are an overwhelming presence in america's top schools (even compared to whites). how many other immigrant groups can say the same? we are often labeled a 'model minority'. now i'm not saying this is always all positive, but to say that we have achieved nothing other than being good at starcraft is really quite stupid. if anything the asian work ethic does show that in fact talent matters very little when it comes to success. | ||
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vpatrickd
Indonesia279 Posts
If they dont show academic success, they are considered a failure and must live with that namestamp for the rest of their life. One of the many sources of these pressures is parents. Parents' teachings have been an important part to an asian's upbringing. You have to follow your parents' advises - if not you're seen as disrespectful. So if students commit suicide - blame it on their parents and their teachings. A kid's actions reflect upon his parents' values. Asian parents generally want their kids to be successful in terms of academic, forcing their kids to enter prestigious universities. Most parents dont even consider the hardships and pressure that that can have on their kids. | ||
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TheGiz
Canada708 Posts
On May 25 2011 03:49 vpatrickd wrote: Most parents dont even consider the hardships and pressure that that can have on their kids. I'm not so sure this is exclusive to Asian parents. It happens here in the West in families where one or both parents never went to university and want their kids to surpass them. The pressure can be pretty great. As a firstborn son in a family where both parents never had any viable post-secondary education to speak of, I can testify that the pressures that I experience to complete my education are massive. My mother will not stop pestering me to get my university marks up. She has no idea how damn difficult some of the stuff I do is. This is different with Asian parents though where one or both of them probably have some form of high-level education. My Chinese friend's mom bugs him all the time and she's a PHD Materials Science Engineer or something like that. She knows how hard it is and still won't give her son an inch! | ||
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Cambium
United States16368 Posts
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/06/29/what-not-to-say-to-your-kid It's kind of funny, but it's scary at the same time, since a lot of parents do say these things to their children (during my time at least, I was born in '87; might be better now). | ||
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Cambium
United States16368 Posts
On May 25 2011 03:49 vpatrickd wrote: It is a culture of east asia to be hardworking and over-achieving - one of the ways to prove success is through academic results. If they dont show academic success, they are considered a failure and must live with that namestamp for the rest of their life. One of the many sources of these pressures is parents. Parents' teachings have been an important part to an asian's upbringing. You have to follow your parents' advises - if not you're seen as disrespectful. So if students commit suicide - blame it on their parents and their teachings. A kid's actions reflect upon his parents' values. Asian parents generally want their kids to be successful in terms of academic, forcing their kids to enter prestigious universities. Most parents dont even consider the hardships and pressure that that can have on their kids. IMO, a lot of this is directly derived from culture. Way back in the days (Confucian teachings), there were four defined occupations, and "shi" (scholarly officials?) was ranked above all else, and the only way to be achieve this social status was through studying. Thousands of years passed since, and very little had changed. In modern days, this deep-rooted need to excel academically is only exacerbated by the intense competition, and we have groups of Asians killing themselves for a tenth of a grade point. | ||
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thisisSSK
United States179 Posts
On May 24 2011 20:28 Deadeight wrote: It's just easier if your motivation is extrinsic. If it's not? Introspection. I never meant you shouldn't work hard for something, but to weigh up what will truly make you happiest. Just because something was hard to do doesn't mean you're happy when you've done it. (For about a month when I changed my diet I had really bad constipation and trust me that didn't make me happy all the time.) When you work hard to achieve something, its the achievement at the end that you want, e.g. getting a better paid job. It's the reward, or promise of the reward, that gives you happiness. So you have to weigh up the reward with the cost of working so hard, and I feel like lots of people fall with "working too hard", far too easily. Yes, working hard and achieving something may well improve your overall happiness, (like having a boring job but it allows you to eat), but you really have to think about whether it will. And I'm not sure this is exactly something people have really had to think about in previous centuries, as the choice to eat and pay the rent or not is a pretty easy one. We have more options now. I think you're argument here is that people don't weight their marginal benefits and marginal costs efficiently enough and therefore they just end up working hard and not getting a lot. Well the problem with that is that the process of attaining a goal isnt always a "cost." For example, studying isn't always a terrible chore. If you enjoy the subject, then working/studying itself is also a reward. I'm still not really sure what you're trying to say though. You can't just tell people to "be happy." That's being insensitive because you're essentially saying that all that they have been working for is pretty much pointless. | ||
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Velocirapture
United States983 Posts
Also many western families feel that since the parents made the decision to have a child and the child did not decide to be born that parents should take a more back seat supportive role in fostering the child's ambitions. This is absolutely not the case for most of the Asians I know. My best friend in high school was Asian and very musically gifted (classical guitar) but his parents forced him into engineering. Ill have to say that my final deduction at this point, based on my own experience, is that the Asian system is great at creating a stronger average academic but does not make stronger people. | ||
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Deadeight
United Kingdom1629 Posts
On May 25 2011 05:18 thisisSSK wrote: I think you're argument here is that people don't weight their marginal benefits and marginal costs efficiently enough and therefore they just end up working hard and not getting a lot. Well the problem with that is that the process of attaining a goal isnt always a "cost." For example, studying isn't always a terrible chore. If you enjoy the subject, then working/studying itself is also a reward. I'm still not really sure what you're trying to say though. You can't just tell people to "be happy." That's being insensitive because you're essentially saying that all that they have been working for is pretty much pointless. If working hard isn't a cost and you enjoy it, then great you're already there, you're doing what you enjoy already. I never said work can't make you happy, just to do what makes you happy. There are however a lot of people working because they feel they should and it will be worth it in the end, and a lot it may not be. I'm saying peoples value "success" as exactly happiness, but it's not. It might bring you happiness in some cases, but don't let other people impose what would bring them happiness on you. Which happens, a lot. If what you're studying now is what you enjoy then you're doing exactly as I said, you're living doing exactly what you want to do. If you're studying your arse off because you feel you "should" and you just "need" to do it, then maybe it's worth re-evaluating. | ||
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NIJ
1012 Posts
On May 25 2011 00:38 Punti wrote: By that logic they'd have to be good at everything they are doing professionally. But it's not the case. South Korea hasn't achieved anything special except their status concerning e-sports. And concerning china: Those people are ridiculous. Working their ass off for literally nothing. Most of them are poor and they don't even have the dignity to stand up. I don't think that is a good attitude. Umm.. if you're implying that koreans don't do anything else well other than sc, you couldn't be any more ignorant and stupid. There's archery, short track and other sporting events with varying degree of success I can't be bothered to mention them all. But yea I agree on your general idea. We're obviously not good at everything. | ||
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iMAniaC
Norway703 Posts
The other half, is the tests themselves, I think. I mean, if 14 hrs a day, 6 days a week will only get you 85% on your test, then I'm willing to go as far as saying there's something wrong with the test and that we're talking about the far end of diminishing returns here. I've heard that the preparations for English exams are all about solving the exams rather than learning the language, with all the focus on "insert correct form" type of questions and no focus on talking or writing it. I think that, for the purpose of learning English, one would get much more out of 20% talking/pronounciation, 30% writing essays, 50% cramming for exams (numbers taken out of my ass) and scoring, say, 83% on the grammar test, but actually learning the language as well! Those 50% extra time used for cramming are, in my opinion, not worth it for 2% extra on the test. And if those 2% extra would get you into the top 3, even though you can't actually talk English with anyone, then I say there's something wrong with the system. Yeah, I know this was kind of a one-sided argument, completely ignoring whatever good sides there are about cramming to perfection in a focused area, but in this case, I think it's worth ignoring it. Oh, and I'm afraid the OP made a rather unfortunate, inadvertant, macabre joke + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/iMAniaC/Suicide-GGNoRe.jpg) | ||
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VIB
Brazil3567 Posts
On May 24 2011 18:10 Dfgj wrote: I agree with what you're saying. But that's because there's a bottleneck of how scarce the top schools can be. Which are the jobs available. So even if we democratize high level education so that everyone has access to the same knowledge. There still isn't jobs for all those guys. So how do employers look for the best people to hire from those universities? How do you tell the good from the bad? So of course some universities are still gonna be perceived as better. Not because education there is different. But because people who attend it, get the better jobs.Not as much as you think. The best schools are also the ones that take in the best students - even if they are not necessarily the best at imparting knowledge. As a result, they show off the best results, because they have the best raw material. It's a combination of quality and scarcity of acceptance to a large degree. This creates a cycle where the best want to get into school X, and thus school X becomes more exclusive while producing the best graduates, increasing the prestige, etc. Creating more high-quality institutions would work to reduce the degree to which this is important, but that's a very long-term thing. It certainly will never remove it entirely, because the mentality and desire for elitism will remain. The only way around it is fixing the jobs/students ratio. In other words, creating more jobs. Which is a really hard problem to solve. But not impossible, there's plenty of things you can do. I'm no expert in Korea, but one of the things I figure is missing there is entrepreneurship. Maybe some program to incentive Koreans to start their own business could help the country grow. Consequently increasing the demand for specialized labor from universities. Which would reduce the importance of the top 3 ones and decreasing suicide rates. So I think there's both sides of the coin here. Both universities could do a better job at democratizing education. And also economic growth would increase this bottleneck of how democratic universities can go. | ||
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yankjenets
United States232 Posts
On May 25 2011 00:38 Punti wrote: And concerning china: Those people are ridiculous. Working their ass off for literally nothing. Most of them are poor and they don't even have the dignity to stand up. I don't think that is a good attitude. Shut up. User was temp banned for this post. | ||
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Ravencruiser
Canada519 Posts
This is not a Korean issue; it happens in most of the Asian countries (Japan being somewhat of an exception). I know this from personal experience due to my upbringing and also stories from friends/cousins regarding their classmates committing suicide. All the proposed solutions in this thread are just wishful and somewhat ignorant "Westernized Thinking". Boosting the overall quality of the universities? Enact better education/psych. assistance programs? In theory, this would definitely help. In a first world nation. But in practice, in developing nations (again, Japan is the exception and Korea is a 1.5 - 2.5nd world nation depending on how one looks at it), these suggestions just won't work. Why? Because people are forgetting the reason in which people sell their souls to get into a good university in the first place - better jobs later in life. Now, obviously the same thing applies to N.A. and Western E.U., but the difference is that when you do fuck up here in Canada, you can always find another alternative to make money and live a decent (by Canadian standards, quite high by world standards) life, be it becoming a plumber, a salesperson, or just someone who collects welfare and living in government housing (had a friend, her mom did exactly this paying ~$100 / month for rent while collecting 1.8k every month in assistance because she was single mother). In comparison, if you fuck up in most Asian countries you're fucked, in more than 1 ways. Not only did you basically just wash 99.99% of the prospects of a bright future down the toilet, moreover your family is "dishonored" in a sense (when I visited my parents back in the motherland, all their friends talked about were which universities their kids got into...), and that worst of all there is no other real hope for you; a harsh life awaits you. It's a matter of life and death, it really is. I know that after seeing the way childhood friends study for 20+ hours a day just how serious business the exams are. In fact, when I put myself in their shoes I could totally empathize with them and would probably be a suicide statistic if I didn't get into at least a 2nd tier university. I hope I shed some light on this matter having lived in both worlds for 10+ years. | ||
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ballasdontcry
Canada595 Posts
Asian parents live vicariously through their child's life. They want them to gain the success they never had in theirs, so academics are pushed ahead of everything else. But unfortunately, to be successful in the modern society, you need other skills that can't be taught through 20+ hours/day of hitting the books, and a lot of those parents fail to realize this. The gossip and bragging is probably worse though, I feel a lot of Asian parents use their kids as their personal trophies to brag to extended family or friends about their parenting prowess, which annoys me to no end. Yes I'm Asian, yes I've gone through this. It makes me sick when relatives look at you with judging eyes based on how many accolades you did or did not get, what university you get into, what program you get into, etc. Fortunately my parents somewhat dropped their hardcore attitude as I was growing up, but of course it's still there to a degree. I can't imagine how much worse the pressure is if I had grown up in those SE Asian countries. | ||
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Roflhaxx
Korea (South)1244 Posts
On May 24 2011 08:21 imperator-xy wrote: they are really doing it the hard way at the same time we are doing it the real soft way which makes us fall behind those ambitous countries Define fall behind..The amount of suicides related to academic pressure in my country is probably between 0 and 1. And I would rather keep it that way and enjoy life instead of living like a robot. | ||
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