Hogwans are after school institutions. There are numerous types of hogwans such as English, math, Korean, music and science. Students might not get out of school until 4:30 to 5:00 pm and then they make their way to one of the hogwans. 4th graders might be at the hogwans until 10pm and junior high and high school students might not leave until 11pm. Many children deprived of their childhood forced into a face pace life. Their goal to pass tests. Nothing of performance is as important as passing tests. So their success lies solely on how well they take tests. Constantly you can see irritated, tired and depressed students wanting something more than a textbook in front of them. 4 to 6 hours of rest is sufficient time to sleep before doing it all over again; an overloaded schedule that is. I am always amazed when I see a Korean student demonstrating creativity because creativity is not honored nearly as much as passing a test.
I question the motives of the parents greatly. At times I pressume that the parents are using the hogwans as a babysitting network. This disturbs me. Many of these students don't spend much time with their mom or dad and I can only imagine that their relationships have been hindered by the families desire or demand to succeed. When I asked one student how much time he spends talking with his mom per week he responded, "2 hours."
The greater evil as I have come to know and call it, is the hogwans themselves with their love for money. Constantly, demanding that the students purchase more resources that have been produced by the hogwans so that they might reap the benefits and during school vacations in the summer and winter they hold intensive programs which the students are required to attend again to reap the benefits. They drain more money out of the families through each of these schemes on top of the cost of what the parents are already paying for their son or daughter to attend the hogwan. When instructed to grade student preformance in speaking and writing I was told not to give any student a mark lower than 20 out of 30 for writing and nothing lower than a 'C' for speaking. All this in hopes of retaining the student body and continuing to receive their money.
When I questioned the system and its lack of integrity I was told that this is not an education system that it was a business. To say it's frustrating is an understatement. The business of the hogwans care little to none about the welfare of the students nor the teachers for that matter and its priority does not lean on educating the future generations, but in gaining as much income out of their customers as possible.
