{"id":580,"date":"2016-02-09T11:02:32","date_gmt":"2016-02-09T18:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/?p=580"},"modified":"2016-05-04T14:09:04","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T21:09:04","slug":"out-of-love-and-for-our-own-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/2016\/02\/09\/out-of-love-and-for-our-own-good\/","title":{"rendered":"“Out of Love” and for “Our Own Good”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whilst reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punishment (part 2)<\/em>, discipline is a term that applies to the training of one’s body and mentality that becomes enhanced through rewards or punishment. When I look back on my childhood, or the Asian culture in general, this only really applies to a minimal extent. Obviously, I don’t speak on behalf of the entire Asian population and am\u00a0not convinced that all Asians\u00a0enforce discipline through punishment, but in general,\u00a0the Asian\u00a0culture does exhibit more discipline, in a stricter degree,\u00a0than others cultures.<\/p>\n

An example of this would be the pressure of entrance exams in South Korea. Students are pressured into taking immense pride for their academic achievements, which has given South Korea its third rank in proficiency in the subjects of\u00a0math and sciences,\u00a0but have come at the cost of\u00a0one of the highest suicide rates (of\u00a0students ranging from 15-24 years old).\u00a0The average hours a student is at school ranges from 9am-5pm, however, the reality is that instead of going straight home, many stay behind at school for extra-curricular courses\/study sessions. These sessions may take up several hours, which\u00a0means that\u00a0students would typically come home around 8pm-10pm or even later. Once home, it is not uncommon for students to continue their study at night throughout\u00a0the early morning.<\/p>\n

Why are they studying this much? Because the entrance exams are believed to be the most successful\u00a0method of getting\u00a0into a good university which are almost\u00a0guaranteed to allow the students to have a stable job after they graduate. To say that the individual’s future relies\/depends on the successful performance of the exam is in no way\u00a0an exaggeration.\u00a0Typically, the better the university, the better the job prospects are. Therefore there is\u00a0more competition with others (as\u00a0with any university, there are a limited amounts of students accepted)\u00a0that follows with the stress of studying for the exam. In addition to the studying, the numerous amounts of school work causes anxiety which may lead to a poorer performance\u00a0by the students. As they are constantly suffocated by an intense academic pressure, that has a profound effect on determining the direction of their life, many students are unable to find adequate coping mechanisms for their stress and become depressed or lose their self-esteem.<\/p>\n

In grade 5 (when I visited South Korea),\u00a0I remember my cousin preparing himself to go to school as early as 5am and coming back in the evening at 10pm. Mind you, he is three years older than me. At the time, in Western classifications, he would have been a grade 8 student.\u00a0As a\u00a0Korean myself,\u00a0I was most definitely shocked to\u00a0learn about the amount of hours students must commit to school. It was even more shocking when my mother and aunt confirmed that this was a normal and standardized practice, as they too, have had to endure the same stress in the past. The fact that these practices have not been changed or improved to a significant degree is both\u00a0disappointing and heart-wrenching such as when a student council from\u00a0 KAIST expresses,\u00a0“Day after day we are cornered into an unrelenting competition that smothers and suffocates us. We couldn\u2019t even spare 30 minutes for our troubled classmates because of all our homework\u2026 We no longer have the ability to laugh freely.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The above quotation is taken from The New York Times article that can be found here: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/23\/world\/asia\/23southkorea.html?scp=1&sq=youth%20suicide%20south%20korea&st=cse)<\/p>\n

But was it really worth it?\u00a0To what degree\u00a0does slaving one’s time away\u00a0by studying for\u00a0a single chance\u00a0of “success” (passing the entrance exam) bring any satisfaction? The majority of students who have endured the stress, passed the entrance exam, graduated, and gained a job must nonetheless face the same pressure and stress\u00a0in the workforce; to maintain their position, workers must work tedious hours, throughout day and night, whilst being obligated to be compliant to the boss (who may assign more work that go beyond the employee’s standard hours). This is no “over-time”. The employees seldom get compensated with extra payment. This is reasoned as a so-called\u00a0“respect for the superior”, the “discipline” to do so, and become “happy” with the state of these living conditions.<\/p>\n

Yes, the students perfect the skill of good work habits. Yes, many students who dedicated their lives to study have gained stable jobs. Yes, doing both these things have, in the generalization of the Korean culture, brought “pride” to their family name. However, the amount of discipline that is necessary to reach these feats are quite excessive and\u00a0bring strains\u00a0on the individual both mentally and physically. In fact, discipline in this regard is almost quite cruel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whilst reading Michel Foucault’s Discipline & Punishment (part 2), discipline is a term that applies to the training of one’s body and mentality that becomes enhanced through rewards or punishment. When I look back on my childhood, or the Asian … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/a1lieblang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}