The Birth of Korean Cool by Euny Hong Read Free Book Online

I think changes that threaten math and rote memorization are unfortunate. These are the aspects of my Korean education that I value
most.
    SCARY MATH
    South Korean students have almost invariably ranked number one in the world in terms of math aptitude, according to studies from multiple sources. 7 Imagine what it was like for me to enter this environment after being at a U.S. public school my whole life. In the Korean sixth grade, they were already studying advanced
number theory. I was at a huge disadvantage: I was one of the few students in my class who couldn’t add long columns of sums in their head.
    I discovered this one day when my sixth-grade teacher, Hong
sun-seng
(no relation), suddenly started reading a series of numbers between two and four digits in length. I didn’t
know if he was reading phone numbers, or the Enigma code, or what. The students sat and listened intently until Hong
sun-seng
said, “. . . equals what?”
    More than half the students answered with the correct sum of all those numbers.
They had done the sums in their heads.
No one had written anything down; he was calling out the numbers
too quickly for that to have been feasible.
    Was I watching a magic show?
    As it turned out, the trendy after-school activity in those days was to go to a private learning academy for lessons in
amsan
—memory honing. This was one of the few types of
hakwon
that were legal in those days—because it taught content that was not directly related to any school subject.
    The
amsan
academies are where students learned to do mental arithmetic. A small handful could do long columns of multiplication in their head as well. Apparently the trick (if you can
call it that) is to first teach a student to be highly proficient in the use of the abacus. Then, whenever the instructor calls out numbers, you’re supposed to envision the abacus beads
flying around, and by seeing in your mind’s eye the final position of the abacus beads, you are able to convert it to regular numbers, and you have your answer. Most complicated shortcut
ever.
    Private learning academies also pushed concentration exercises, with freaky consequences. A family friend had a daughter of about six, named Sujin. She had been attending a special
“concentration academy.” One night when our two families were dining at a Seoul restaurant, Sujin’s parents asked her to do a demonstration: by focusing all her mental energy (or
something), she was able to slice through a pair of wooden chopsticks with a business card. Without denting the card. My sisters and I could not believe our eyes, so Sujin did it again and
again.
    One aspect of Korean school I did appreciate is that girls studied as much as boys. They didn’t have this hang-up that American girls have that boys won’t like them if they show
talent in math and science. Korean guys are not especially attracted to girls who are bad at math and science.
    THE ASH EATERS
    My parents knew students when they were in school who learned English by memorizing one page of a dictionary each day. After they’d fully committed it to memory,
they’d burn it and eat the ashes. This wasn’t because they really thought the words would stay in their body if they ate the pages. Burning a page is a ritual sacrifice symbolizing what
you have to forego—time, your short-term happiness—in order to achieve something more important. Such practices are very infrequent and largely anecdotal—everyone knows someone
who knows someone who has done it. But the legend has staying power because it symbolizes the real suffering and masochism involved in assimilating huge amounts of information.
    My favorite anonymous Korean American author of the blog “Ask a Korean” puts it best: “The Korean [he refers to himself thusly, in the third person] cannot see why ‘rote
memorization’ became a dirty word in education somehow. . . . There are certain things about contemporary America that drive The Korean crazy,