Cram Schools: Bullying in East Asian Schools

This essay sample essay on Cram Schools offers an extensive list of facts and arguments related to it. The essay’s introduction, body paragraphs and the conclusion are provided below.

One day in Japan, a 14 year-old boy invited a younger schoolmate, 11 year-old, out for some fun, luring him to a quiet hill where he strangled the boy and sawed off his head, then placed it into a plastic bag and dropped it off at the gate of his school with a note from his mouth “Revenge against the compulsory education system and the society that created it.

” This is one incident from a considerable pieces of evidence showing that school kids in East Asia have committed violent crimes and even committed suicide resulting from the extreme stress resulting from too much study and too much emphasis on achieving academic goals.

Cram school, a place which teaches kids in the wrong way while promising to help them reach their dreams, is bullying many East Asian school kids, adversely affecting their lifestyle and personal development, family relationships and overall quality of life.

Many cram schools claim that parents and their kids come to enroll in the supplementary courses because they are unhappy with the traditional school system. But, do they come to enroll with none of former information of the cram schools? Does the ad of the school influence on them?

Of course, cram school ads exploit parental concerns, emphasize competition and reinforce preconceived idea about the importance of grades rather than learning.

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For instance, famous cram school brochures include the highest score of their ex-students to illustrate that they can help kids to reach high scores just like they had done before. Moreover, cram school obviously takes advantage of kids’ dreams and parents’ dreams for their kids because they know that Education in East Asian countries is perhaps the most decisive factor for personal career success in these competitive societies.

Cram School Hong Kong

Society’s expectation like this is the flawed nature of the education system. As a result, parents would feel instability about their kids grades, so they try to find anything which can guarantee them that their kids would pass an entrance exam. Parental concern makes parents and their children to be as cram school preys. However, there is a statistic of Office of National Education Committee in Thailand shows that most students who decide to enroll in cram school already have good grades in their regular schools.

Why? Nearly 90% of kids want to have something they can boast of being better than everyone else. “(Survey of Elementary School kids) “Approximately 60% of Japanese high school kids go for supplemental lessons. “(Daily Life of Japanese High School Kids) Do those who operate cram schools ever realize the effects of their ads and their promises? In South Korea, a woman was arrested by police because of her part time job as a prostitute. She told the police that she needed the extra money to pay for extra tuition for her kids.

Why did she have to do so? No mother wants their kids to be alienated; if other parents send their kids to the school, why shouldn’t she. But of course, the cram school fees are very expensive because “the more they guarantee, the higher fee parents have to pay. ” Cram schools can place a heavy burden of family finances. However, cram schools have claimed that many regular schools fail to teach their students adequately. They make students bored because of old styles of teaching which focus on memorization and teacher-centered instruction.

Traditional teachers only read textbooks to their kids and the kids have to listen and answer their teachers’ questions. Nevertheless, the traditional system still creates some communication between teacher and student while cram schools do not. If we take a look at the cram school way of teaching carefully, we would see that cram schools perpetuate the system. Cram school instructors tells their kids all they need to know to pass an exam. There is no class interaction. The students just copy down notes and remember what the tutors said.

It is obviously no more than rote-learning which oppresses kids development of thought. Many Thai school kids even sit in front of 20 inches T. V screens in square box rooms in some famous cram schools listening to their tutors teach from the screens !! Cram schools are bullying our kids! They make kids stressed, reduce their opportunities to pursue other interests and hobbies, behave violently, have less time to talk to their parents, or even commit suicide because of an overload of time studying too much and stress.

Kids are duped into believing cram schools are necessary if they wish to reach their goals, so they do not mind putting in the effort. They all just hope to attain their goals because success or failure in an entrance examination can influence their entire future. Many East Asian kids spend at least 2 hours in the evening after regular school time, quite a few hours on weekend and even during the summer holidays taking extra courses. According to those evidences above, these kids are losing their teenage lifestyle because they sacrifice most of their time to study for only one day of examination.

Cram Schools Drawbacks

Kid is the age of development. Kids love playing any entertaining activities and do what they want. Sport is the way to be healthier and music is the way to relax. But, unfortunately East Asian kids do not have time to do the activities because they have too important task to devote their time to do such a thing. Moreover, now the cram school kids hardly communicate to other children with kids’ language. They only talk to other when they couldn’t catch some words that tutors said.

Take a look at these kids’ mental and physical conditions. No time to chat or make some joke with friends. What is an image of our next generation when they are adults? Serious? Selfish? Stressed? The answer is serious, selfish and stressed because they have skipped many parts which help them develop personal qualifies, social skills and know how to provide balance in their lives. However, they are still as a kid!! Many of them are not willing to study too hard for the only one examination, but they have to.

As a result, in Hong Kong, one in three kids have had suicidal thoughts and teenagers in Thailand are second only to adult workers among groups of the population most likely to commit suicide. (School Daze) And even though the extreme cases of students committing suicide are rare, all kids who attend cram school are losing valuable time which could be spent on much healthier activities usually associated with childhood and teenage years. It is a time to stop this bullying. There are some solutions to this problem. First, traditional teachers salaries should be increased.

Recommendations to Solve Cram School Issues

Because now they are low-paid so they may not have any effort to improve their boring way of teaching. Here a percentage of GDP of some East Asian countries spent on education, Malaysia 4. 5%, Thailand 4. 4%, Singapore 3. 6%, Korea 3. 5% and China 1. 9% while a developed and successful western country like USA. had 7% of GDP spent on education. (School Daze) American kids are hardly under-pressure from entrance examination and can study what they want, not study English, Maths or even their mother-tongue languages in cram school like Asian kids.

For American education system, high school kids will send their GPA to any universities which they want to study, then just wait for universities acceptance letters at home; Could you see differences between western kids and eastern kids? In East Asia today too much money is given to cram schools while regular teachers are paid so little. The focus is wrong. Governments should devote more budget to improving regular schools because traditional schools are places where children can make friends by taking part in a range of activities together by working in groups.

Survey of Japanese elementary school kids’ lifestyle perceptions reported that 93% of kids think that school is where they can make friends, only 7% think that cram school does. On the other hand, around 70% think that cram school is a place which is strict, tires teens out, but will make kids smarter!! Everything seems to be upside down so it’s time for the governments to react. Another solution is parental action. Many say that they would be willing to pay for a better education for their kids. Do cram schools really provide a better education?

Are the high monthly fees really justified? Think more… actually cram schools make relationships between parents and children weaker because cram schools steal kids’ time from their parents. Many kids spend 10 hours or more a week at cram school while home is just where they sleep at night. As a result, parents should try hard to spend more time with their kids to shorten the gap between them because parents can help their kids to learn and relieve their stress. The last solution is eliminating the flawed value about entrance examination.

In many East Asian countries, entrance examinations are regarded as the determining factor for a young person’ future. We all have to get this thought out of our head. Kids themselves hold the key to their goals and regular school can tell them the way to reach them so there is no need to let cram schools tell them more. Actually, the primary cause of this bullying comes from adults so adults should not stand still and look on as our kids are being bullied by schools with no responsibility. If we know how to solve it, please solve!! We all have to save our next generation.