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I saw similar themes living in Japan for a year.. the same thing applies for college, I would see kids literally fall asleep face in textbook on the train at 10pm from studying all day.. then I'd go to class at uni and the students would sleep in class and not give a shit. It's all about getting to university. You'd see kids attending schools or cram schools 7 days a week.
A lot of students told me (I had to do a campus wide interview for class about job hunting pressures) that their grades don't actually matter at all, its all about where they graduate from.
A lot (high % number here) of Japanese female students would wake up at 4-5am after getting only a few hours sleep, not to study.. but to start their make up procedure. They'd cake that shit on with a trowel. I reckon they'd leave a perfect facial print if you attacked them with a towel. I didn't see any of the double eyelid thing, but they did shave their eyebrows within a millimetre of their lives.
China doesn't seem to hold this pressure from what I've seen, but Japan and Korea are very similar in this regard.
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I'm a bit confused. At the end of the trailer the director posits a very modest vision for the film. But in the About the Film section, the purpose is stated is much more amibitious:
"So. What's life like for a Korean student? In one of the most competitive societies in the world, how does one find their place? What does it take to achieve your aspirations and goals? Our documentary will take a look at the lives of five Korean teenagers on the verge of either reaching- or losing- their dreams. The film will follow the students during the most stressful time of their lives- their last year of high school."
If I'm to go by the About the Film, which seems to be more comprehensive then I have some concerns about the film.
As a Korean American adoptee with an interest in Anthropology, this is a significant film for me but I have serious reservations about its presentation.
First, it seems to argue for a collective Korean high school experience. That in itself is slightly problematic as it confines a whole generation of individuals into a single, small box. But that aside, the director seems to make no mention of having visited any other school. So she appears to be using a very small group of individuals, within a single institution, to generalize about an entire population. Not much information is given on the site about the school itself but if we assume for a second (for the sake of the argument) that the school is a general upper middle class high school, then there's an enormous section of the larger Korean student population suddenly without a voice. Korea has multiple types of High schools, among them: Foreign Language, Science and Math, and Arts. So is the director trying to say that by looking at this specific high school, we, the audience, can somehow understand any Korean high school student from any background?
Seems a tad ambitious. Perhaps this particular school is special and representative of the larger population; but the trailer had no hint of that.
My other "beef" if you will with the film is the shallowness of it. I don't mean shallow in the material sense. It looks at some big issues. But it only looks at them. It's the difference between looking at the cover of a book and reading a book. I'm not saying it's impossible for the director to go deeper but in the 18minutes I sat watching the trailer, I was not convinced that was her intention.
To expand, by shallowness I'm basically referring to the idea of culture as an answer rather than a question. Why are these (particular) girls pre-occupied with looking white? The film seems to attribute this to "Korean culture" without giving any hint into unpacking that really complex idea. What does that actually mean? How is this idea of beauty constructed? Who is constructing it? Perhaps that seems a bit of stretch for a film like focused on a small group of individuals, but if we're only getting interviews from students, what are we really getting?
The reason I think Culture as an answer, or only looking at the cover of a book, is problematic is because Korea is turned into this oversimplified "other" that has all these social problems. If this is how the film indeed turns out, then I'm convinced it'll create new stereotypes among the audience or reinforce old ones rather than enhance the discussion about Korean social norms and practices.
Pheeew. Long winded. I may sound like I'm bashing on this film but I would like to see it succeed. However, just because it's a film about my birth country doesn't necessitate my immediate approval. This was not a 2 minute trailer where we just saw giant explosions and cheesy one-liners. This was 18 minutes. And in that 18 minutes, I was looking, the entire time, for some depth or at least acknowledgement of its absence. I saw none of it.
It certainly looks like a pretty film. And it has a strong topic: aspects of Korean society that are accessible enough to non-Koreans while still foreign enough to be compelling.
But if the film can't get past the shock-and-awe factor to provide some actual substance, then I doubt the film will be able to make any legitimate claims about Korean culture and Korean society.
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i would think they would overview the different aspects of korean high school life in the trailer, then delve deeper in the actual movie...
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On September 09 2011 13:06 Mtndrew wrote:
i would think they would overview the different aspects of korean high school life in the trailer, then delve deeper in the actual movie...
Fair point and I certainly won't rule out that possibility. I'm sure I'll watch because I want to see how it turns out.
My concern though is that in 18 minutes, I was given no depth. I was given melo-drama. I was given a western-imposed view of beauty (the implication from the director and scenes in the trailer saying that from the obsession with double eye-lids was bad. aka. not inline with Western ideology). But I wasn't given any hint at depth or future depth. So if it had been 5 minutes or even 10 minutes I think I could accept that argument. But 18 minutes is a looong time.
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Korean education is fucked up. Once you're in a university it's very easy, having been to one of the top ones in Seoul I can attest to that, but the high school test is crazy competitive, and from I've been told stupid as hell (it basically only tests your memory).
As soon as I have kids I need to get the hell out of Asia...
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On September 09 2011 12:51 Gingerninja wrote:
I saw similar themes living in Japan for a year.. the same thing applies for college, I would see kids literally fall asleep face in textbook on the train at 10pm from studying all day.. then I'd go to class at uni and the students would sleep in class and not give a shit. It's all about getting to university. You'd see kids attending schools or cram schools 7 days a week.
A lot of students told me (I had to do a campus wide interview for class about job hunting pressures) that their grades don't actually matter at all, its all about where they graduate from.
A lot (high % number here) of Japanese female students would wake up at 4-5am after getting only a few hours sleep, not to study.. but to start their make up procedure. They'd cake that shit on with a trowel. I reckon they'd leave a perfect facial print if you attacked them with a towel. I didn't see any of the double eyelid thing, but they did shave their eyebrows within a millimetre of their lives.
China doesn't seem to hold this pressure from what I've seen, but Japan and Korea are very similar in this regard.
China has a similarly rigorous education system.
Cram schools are common and the college entrance exam is treated as the single most important event of everyone's life.
Very few university students take their studies very seriously, a combination of "a degree from a name brand school gets you everywhere" and "weeee no parents"
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In greece it is the same although we do not get into such situations because kids get prepared at expensive tutoring institutions instead of at school (i went to a private school so we did more but i still got extra lessons). we start having extra lessons from 14-15 and this goes on till the end of school, even for 1 month during the summer.
imo the exams are easy, but maybe thats because i have always been an excellent student so i never got anxious about anything, i just prepared like everyone else and aced it np. my friends-sister though were pressed a lot and failure is rly straining on your mentality
these exams are practically the only way to get into an university in greece so they play a major part in your upbringing. also, university education is very important socially in greece, and in many sectors people with degrees from other countries are frowned upon (as long as they have entered a greek university as undergraduates they are fine though, and masters-doctoras are mostly from foreign universities anyway. ofc named universities are excluded like harvard mit etc)
greece is also a very corrupt country so people sometimes find ways to get into the state universities by other means.
On the other hand, once u enter the university you are encouraged to go party and live the "student life" as we call it.
there is no greek university that has compulsory attendance at class. only some have laboratories which you have to attend (but they take place like once a week for 2 months out of the semester in most cases)
therefore, what the system encourages students to do is sit on their ass for 5 months then when the exam period starts study some and pass the test.
even if you dont pass the test because lets face it you know nothing about the subject, there is no penaltynothing. you can take the exam every year 2 times (for each subject) and there is no limit to how many you can fail. there are thousands of students who go to university for years and years and have passed no subjects. meanwhile the government pays the cost of their studies.
there is also no limit to how long you can be a student. there are 40y old people who entered when they were 18 and still havent finished. their classification as a student still stands.
i got caught up in this and as of now i have only passed half my classes and i attend the arguably hardest university in greece. so i have to repeat 20 classes (just give the exam no other prequisite for most of them, some need labs and reports that require work). i find myself doing nothing for 3 years and blaming the system. ofc it was me who got lazy after studying my whole life for the final nationwide exams, but having a really lenient system that doesnt inforce consistency and encourages eternal student status is bad.
as a final note, there are high school students in greece that go through drug addictions and mental breakdowns for no reward, although the degrees have great recognization for good universities.
also greece has a lot of young people who go to england-us to study and they can avoid all the system so thats a bonus for them. i had the means to go but preferred to stay home. silly me.
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if Korean student study 16 hours a day. Chinese students study more
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On August 29 2011 10:52 RinesOnRx wrote:
What really bothers me about Korean university is that many students don't take their studies seriously, nor are they required to do so by the university. Korean society is obsessed with the name of the school that you go to/ graduate from, hence why HS students go through such a rigourous competition. But once university starts, many students simply lose focus in their studies and their career goals. There was an article stating that while SK students have one of the highest acceptance rates into Harvard, they also have the highest drop out rates. Students are more interested in student hobby groups, nightlife, etc. instead of their academics. Honestly, the streets around universities in Seoul look like an entertainment district filled with restaurants, bars, etc. Grade inflation is ludicrous in Korea. I read a Korean article where more than 80% of grades awarded was above B or B+ (I will try to find an article alter). This is bizarre especially considering 80%(!!!) of HS graduates enroll in universities. In contrast, maybe ~40% of HS students in Canada enrol in univerity and the class average is set around C+/B-. There seems to be an understanding between universities and its students that once the students matriculate, they will be guaranteed a degree.
What I said above certainly doesn't apply to all universities in SK, but SK universities in general are a total fail.
I go to Korea University.
Professors are required not to give more than 35% of students an A or A plus and not more than another 35% a B or B plus. Grade inflation, certainly, but not quite as bad as 80% getting an A.
I feel like recently students slacking off and not doing anything in university is changing, though. In my years studying at KU, I have never once attended a class that didn't have attendance requirements, with typically anywhere from 3 to 8 absences resulting in automatic F's. Sure there are people sleeping in class here and there, but I don't commonly see more than two or three students sleeping at the back in any given class with class sizes between 40 and 70. In addition, I keep being told that to secure a decent job -- and by that I mean a job at Samsung or Hyundai or Kia, which is ultimately what most people at my business school are aiming at -- one should have a GPA of at least 3.7.
(This is not as hard as it may sound, because grades are given on a 4.5 scales, and as mentioned, grades are inflated, but the average GPA is still around 3.3 each semester, so to secure jobs, some level of competitiveness at the university level is now becoming necessary as it gets harder and harder to secure jobs and mere degrees are increasingly insufficient for job security even here).
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Not to generalize, as this isn't always the case, but this is an issue with prestigious US universities as well... It's usually very competitive and difficult to get in, but once you are in, it gets a lot easier. Maybe not to the extent of Korean University, but this is not a strictly Korean phenomenon.
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Yeah, it happens in US universities, too.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
I read a very good article on the topic a few days that argued part of it was simply due to consumerism. When parents and students dish out anywhere from $15,000-50,000 (or even more?) per year for tuition at a prestigious private school, they expect nothing less than A's, and the professor's role changes from that of an educator to a service person.
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when I was in Korea when I was a middle school student, the school finished at 4 pm..then I had hak-won [extra curricular tutoring schools] untill 11 pm. And on Wednesdays, we finished at 1:30am. True story.
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It does seem depressing in Korea not going to lie, they shouldn't be working that much. It's not healthy.
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EPT
