Lying, Stealing, and Cheating–Oh my!

Response to this post.

School, a certain period when the majority goes through in a dragging, painstaking manner to spend the rest of their 60 years with a successful life involving good payment, good job, and good life. And they say that high school is the major determination of your adult life: You live in a box or you don’t live in a box, some people may jokingly (yet terrifyingly) say. With such amount of pressure and anxiety, it is not so surprising that many students choose to cheat to succeed.

Although I am Korean, I feel particularily ashamed of my own home country. The original usage of private institutes or hagwons  is now being abused; what originally was merely a test-preparer now became a test-taker. I remember groaning at one certain incident at our school when a man attempted to steal a PSAT or SAT test booklet. Nowadays, there are even issues about teachers at hagwons writing college admission essays for students. What I find shocking is how despite these negative impressions, parents still continuously send their child to an endless line of hagwons with long-hour lessons. Another problem with hagwons is that they disable students from developing independent and creative minds. I recall how much I disliked attending art hagwons drawing nothing but fruits and objects with a simple graphite pencil for countless hours and days.

Cheating is not a major problem in only Korea; this is a major problem at an international scale. What is wrong with the world? we wonder. Perhaps is the innately inevitable for students to lie, steal or cheat. Or maybe it is an instinct they follow as everybody desires to be successful by attending a prestigious college for money, degree, and fame.

~ by aliciapark on December 3, 2008.