THE GRIM EXPECTATIONS

What the polarizing school system taught the “soft” generation

I’ve heard my generation being called “snowflakes” more times than I can count (“Maybe Princess Elsa has cast her spell…”). We are pretty soft, but anybody ever ask why?

At the end of last month, Netflix Philippines added to its ever growing roster of South Korean dramas the JTBC megahit SKY Castle. It beat beloved dramas like Goblin and Reply 1988 to become the highest-rated drama in South Korea.

The Korean drama approaches its subject matter in a humorous, yet dark and twisted manner. The residents of the luxury SKY Castle neighborhood are obsessed with appearances as well. They go to extreme lengths to ensure their children can get into the country’s elite universities. “SKY” is an acronym used to refer to the three most prestigious universities in South Korea: Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.

The show depicts a competitive, cutthroat atmosphere based on, and grounded in, the well documented realities South Korean students face.

It has been reported that the South Korean youth spend up to 16 hours (or more) a day at school and in afterschool hagwons, prep schools. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that South Korean students spent more time studying than any students in any other OECD country, while their parents spent the most on private tutors.

The OECD’s current members list includes the United States, the country that brought us Lori Loughlin and the college admissions bribery scandal a few months ago. Wealthy parents were spending over hundreds of thousands, in some case millions, of dollars in fraudulent schemes to get their children into prestigious American universities like Georgetown and Stanford.

Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade, who enrolled at the University of Southern California, posted on YouTube a statement: “I do want the experience of like game days, partying… I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”

While the competitive atmosphere and stress on education depicted in SKY Castle did remind me of the American scandal, the overall mentality that South Korean students face, on average, is incomparable.

A 2014 New York Times op-ed by Se Woong Koo, to my horror, mentioned that 53 percent of suicidal youths identified inadequate academic performance as the main reason for such thoughts.

The emphasis and value of education can be found in the country’s “success story,” the education system often recognized as a major factor in the country’s post-war economic development. It seems that valuable education, however, is swapped for the appearance of being educated, of going to the prestigious SKY universities, of being busy cramming in schools, of scoring high on pure academic exams. Albert

Einstein, considered one of the smartest men to ever walk on this earth, once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.”

Back to the United States, the American Psychological Association’s annual “Stress in America” report stated that members of Generation Z reported the worst mental health of any generation. For the school-aged generation, it was found that gun violence was one of the largest sources of stress.

America prides itself as the “Land of Liberty” (the truth of that statement is completely different matter to discuss all together), and many hold their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms dearly. In recent years, it has been reported that the number of mass shootings in America have increased substantially, and has the greatest occurrence out of any other country.

Many attribute this to the fact that the United States has the highest percapita gun ownership in the world along with various other factors that create a “fertile environment” for these mass shootings. Call me old fashioned, but the possibility of their life being taken should not be something school-aged children should be worried about.

I have not been able to find studies about what causes stress in students in the Philippines. And maybe that is something we should invest in. It need not be a comprehensive study, just asking young people about what they are concerned about instead of automatically labeling them as “soft” or calling them “snowflakes.”

It seems to me that many issues between parent and child in SKY Castle are solved when there is proper communication, when speaking to each other is partnered with actually listening.

While anxiety filled Gen Zers of America are labeled as “soft” by older generations, if we actually listened to their concerns, from gun violence to sexual harassment to immigration, they are completely well founded and paint a picture of the type of world is being left to the future generation.

The youth, especially nowadays, know a lot more about the world than a lot of adults think. I don’t mean the sort of wisdom that can only be developed over the years, but seriously raw information that they are overwhelmed by without the wisdom that can only be developed over the years.

The American Psychological Association’s annual “Stress in America” report stated that members of Generation Z reported the worst mental health of any generation. For the school-aged generation, it was found that gun violence was one of the largest sources of stress.