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The Pressure Cooker: The True Culprits Of Cheating

On the morning of Saturday, June 11th, 2016, Kim sharpened his specifically chosen 2B pencils, double checking once more that he had his erasers, pens, and water bottle packed methodically in his bag. With a deep sigh he welcomed what was to come. Grinning, he thought with pride of his recent high score on a mock ACT. Adjusting his glasses, he strutted into the ACT room with the confidence as if he had already aced the exam… Only to be told the exam had been canceled after a leak of the test had been discovered.

Kim, along with a horde of disbelieving and irate Korean students, could feel their perspiration drying up, the countless hours in his room ticking backwards, and the stacks of diligently read books returning neatly to the shelves. It was all for nothing. Hopes dissipating, he returned home, branded a “cheater”.  Kim was just one of some 5,500 students in Korea who were forced to return home that day.

This isn’t wholly unexpected, a pattern of cheating in Korea has emerged: in 2007, 900 SAT test scores were cancelled due to cheating; in 2013, the SAT was cancelled throughout the country; and in 2014, SAT test scores were worryingly delayed due to late discovery of cheating.

The familiar response is a condescension against these students rather than trying to understand the larger puzzle. We look at only one piece and yet comfortably pass judgment.

We have to understand that cheating is aroused by deep rooted obsessions over standardized testing. Korean culture’s obsession with admissions to renowned colleges and perfect scores on exams has bred a generation of students more willing to break the rules. The excessive yearn to perform the best on these standardized exams cause students to abandon their principles for the sake of their “future”. This future is informed by the unrealistic expectations of parents and a common misled belief that a prestigious university is a necessary prerequisite for a good life. The nature of standardized tests and testing culture in Korea has brought about this cheating epidemic. It is just one flaw of the Korean education system that I have come to recognize.

Not all education systems have these cheating issues. Finland’s education system is completely the opposite of Korean style education. In Finland, mandatory standardized tests are only introduced when graduating from high school at the age of 17 to 19. Throughout their education, teachers don’t grade or rank students with letter grades or numerical scores, they write feedback that monitors the qualitative improvements students are making in the classroom. This breeds a less competitive learning atmosphere. Additionally, there is no nationally enforced curriculum, instead classroom curriculums are based upon teachers’ analysis of students’ needs and interest, there is no emphasis on GPAs or standardized exams. In order to spark creativity in their students, which would produce better results in the long run, Finland does not let any de-motivators, like comparisons among peers or grades, to enter their classroom.

South Korea, though, emphasizes standardized testing and grueling hours spent in private classes called hagwons. There is little leniency in Korean education programs. Students after school immediately ride the subway to hagwons until late into the night, usually around 10pm. These academies barely allow students to take breaks or eat proper meals as they operate relentlessly until government regulated hours are over. In such a strict education system, students are given standardized tests to assess their ability to cram in thousands of words before a vocabulary test or their ability to memorize rote answers to formulaic questions. South Korea saps out all creativity by confining students to standardized assessments and high pressure hagwons.

The values that both education systems pursue conflict with one another. Finland’s education system builds mutual trust in the classroom, important for productive learning, and emphasizes academic integrity in their students. Finland builds healthy and psychologically developed students who bond with one another and with their teachers. Korea’s education system, on the other hand, shifts the focus away from trust and healthy relationships to simply hard work ethic  and quantity over quality. Korean students and professors don’t have an open and comfortable relationship that adapts to students’ personal needs.

Perhaps that is why Finland has never had a reported SAT or ACT scandal. Perhaps that’s why I can’t find any studies done on Finnish cheating rates – it’s just not a problem.

Korean attitudes towards education have inculcated in students’ minds that they would utterly fail without the endless hours of private classes and hagwons for every single subject. We generate a culture of monotonous robots that jot down lectures for hours in a cramped classroom, nothing more than a perfunctory duty. We have overly stressed dependence on privatized academies and the need for IVY leagues on our resumes. This emphasis has lead to overwhelming student stress; the risk of not meeting these unrealistic expectations is that one is branded a failure at life.

Before you criticize Korean students for cheating, you should consider the larger picture of the society they live in. The fact that there is a pattern of cheating in Korea means that there is blatantly a fundamental problem at the core of Korea’s education system.

 

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