"At this age? Tradition and Discipline." "No way!"

     Does education actually kill creativity? On my way to home in Seoul, I watched a movie "Dead Poets Society" in a bus. After watching all of students' struggles and serious concerns regarding their futures, I became to see them as pitiful puppets (of course, mine as well) As a teenager, though we want to try so many things, our parents, school, and society do not allow us to do so. They believe we are not capable of deciding our own future, so that they have to "help" us based on their more abundant experience. Yes, it is true that they have valuable life-experiences that we do not have. However, still, they have to respect our own choices. Their role should be confined to "advising" not "planning". The way they are doing, especially the educational system itself, suppress potential creativity inside us.

What is CREATIVITY?

     Before talking about whether education is restraining our creativity or not, we should make clear what creativity is. What is creativity? The word itself implies it is an ability to create something has not existed before. There might be many different opinions regarding when we create something innovative. In my opinion, what makes us creative is our potential innate ability. Everyone is talented in different ways, and to encourage creativity, people have to work on what their inborn abilities lie.

What's the Problem?

     However, the problem is that students are not allowed to do what they want to do. In the movie "Dead Poets Society", the protagonist Neil chooses death when he cannot draw his future as an actor anymore. Despite his passion, his father does not allow him to be an actor. For him, being a doctor is the only one life-road. As a result, Neil shoots himself.

     It is not only his parents who pushed him to death. The whole society, and the education system are accomplices. As Sir Ken Robinson mentioned in the video, most of the education system all around the world aims preparation for the college application. High school or middle school education is not meaningful byitself, but meaningful as a menas of college prep.

      Plus, ultimate purpose of public education is not to raise unique and outstanding students all over the fields - arts, sports, studies. Actually, I personally believe that public education is producing "brick in the wall". It is not raising students as individuals, but as components. Especially in Korea, it is such a burden for students to be outstanding. Parents constantly tell us to be a common people as others are, which is the hardest to accomplish in Korea. To be a proper brick in the wall, students have to survive among the severe competition for the college application, job interview.

     As a result, education not respecting diverse possibility is restraining students from doing what they are talented and that's the reason why students are not able to fully display their inner potential. In this perspective, I'm totally with what Sir Ken Robinsons says.

What about KMLA?

     Then, what about KMLA, so-called "the best in Korea"? Personally, as a student who has been educated in KMLA for a year, I believe KMLA provides students much better circumstances than the others do. However, still it is "Korean" Minjoks Leadership Academy.

     When I asked to my father (a retired middle school teacher who taught Korean for half of his whole life) what does he think about Korean education especially about creativity, he answered "it CAN be different if teachers teach differently" But, actually, this society does not allow teachers to be DIFFERENT as Mr. Keating was fired after death of Neil. Headmaster and teachers want students to be in SKY, and education seems unrelated to college application is regarded useless.

     KMLA is not an exception. Even though it has much better situation than the other common high schools, we students still live under the pressure of university application. Parents are the same. I even saw one of my friends who quit KMLA becuase of his parents' firm belief that he will not be able to go to medical school if he remains in KMLA. Though he told his parents that he wants to be a chemist, his parents did not allow him to do so by arguing that he does not know the society.

Of course, it is true that we need advices from parents and other adults to decide our future career. However, I believe that current system does not allow minimum amount of students' freedom and possibility of creativity. To resolve the entire situation, we will need wholistic measure, not the fragmentary measures which governments have introduced. I hope that students will be able to do whatever they truly want and display creativities which would make our lives much better than now. I wish no more Neil in the society....

THS Standardization of Universities

THB Companies should not ask job seekers to write their university on the resume.

THB Nationalwide testing system in Korea should be abolished.

* P.S. I'm really interested in the education issue in Korea... I firmly believe that most of social problems in Korea come from the sucking education system... I wanna debate over this!!