hankyoreh

“Mothers: The difficult and small-class-size courses that Seoul National University likes are at the special purpose and autonomous private high schools. Starting in 2021 [the year current second-year middle school students enter university], there is likely to be an assessment system where everyone with just 90 points or more on their high school record gets an ‘A.’ The answer is clear: special purpose and autonomous private high schools at all costs.”

Around 400 student parents were gathered at the Mar. 4 briefing in Daegu by a school admission academy on admission to special purpose and autonomous private high schools. Every time something important came up on the large screen about middle school histories and self-introduction, they took a picture of it with their phones.

“The key to success in managing middle school student records is whether the mother becomes part of the same ‘team’ as the student and can open the door to the teacher’s heart.”

“For the ‘specific skills’ section, you absolutely need good evaluations from math and science teachers. You’re probably thinking, ‘That’s a lot of teachers I have to ‘open up’!’”

As the presentation continued to stress the parents’ role in managing the student‘s record, one parent self-deprecatingly declared, “So mothers have to have good personalities too.”

“I can’t get my bearings,” lamented one parent who attended the briefing with her first-year middle school student son. “I‘m thinking, ’I really have to do all this?‘”

The parent went on to say she had quit her job once her son reached middle school. He had shown a gift for science early on - memorizing the symbols of the elements at the age of seven - and she hoped to get him into a science high school.

“I was working while he was in elementary school, and I didn’t have time to think about things like centers for talented students,” she explained.

“Having a gift and actually getting into schools are two different things,” she added fretfully. “It seems like mothers are required to know.”

With parents increasingly accepting as gospel the importance of special purpose and autonomous private high schools for admission to elite universities, competition is heating up even at the middle and elementary school levels. The special high school’s “self-directed study application” is similar in many ways to the comprehensive student record screening used for college admission, where extracurriculars become a key part of the student’s record and self-introductions and interviews play a major role. In short, it‘s become a kind of “pre-test” for university admission.

One middle school in Seoul’s Gangnam district runs a group known as GENY, or the Global Education Network for the Youth. Members are offered a package of seven different extracurricular activities ranging from three mock UN sessions and visits to the Blue House to workshops on table manners and performance activities involving breakdancing and pantomime.

“Parents are really focused on picking up these kinds of extracurriculars in addition to trying to get a jump on studies,” explained a 46-year-old parent surnamed Kim.

As with the Research & Education (R&E) programs some high school students enter for college admission, the middle school gives students scientific research reports and papers to write during their vacations.

“You have middle school students writing papers even university students can‘t write,” said Kim.

“If they go to a hagwon [private after-school academy], students are given five to six topics to choose from and provided with one-on-one customized services until it’s complete,” Kim added. “Basically, the hagwon is writing it for you.”

As word spread of the middle school’s focus on extracurriculars, many parents have been seeking to get their children admitted - even it means misrepresenting their address.

“Starting in the first year of middle school, the kids who are going into the sciences add on science and math hagwons, while the kids who are on a liberal arts track go to debate hagwons to prepare for national English debate competitions,” said a 44-year-old Gangnam-area parent surnamed Nam.

“You’re not allowed to write about awards from outside competitions on your student record, but the kids who’ve done it are supposed to be at a greater advantage in the interviews than ones who haven’t because they get to encounter lots of different information about current events,” Nam added.