Essay 1 - Rewrites

Seoyoung Lee

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW (04)

11 November 2015

Unsuitable Scholastic Ability Test in Korea

 

             The Suneung exam is a scholastic ability test that is conducted in Korea. It is the most important exam that a high school student has to take. Getting a high score on the Suneung is important to get into the top universities, where students believe that it will enable them to get a good job. However, many people think the Suneung is unsuitable for evaluating students’ ability these days. Therefore, if Suneung is not used for college admission, it will develop students’ creativity, help individual development, and solve social problems like teenage depression.

             First, if the Suneung is not used for scholastic ability test, students will be able to develop creativity. The Suneung is a single test that is held once a year to evaluate what student has been studying for their whole school life. A lot of what is learned is done by rote learning and this lowers students’ creativity. Students need to use time to solve the problems from various angles and think about the solving process itself, not by indoctrination. This will develop thinking skills, comprehensive ability, creativity and critical thinking power. However, stereotyped Suneung emphasizes ‘memorizing’ rather than serious consideration which causes abnormal intellectual development. So, for example, there are essay type exams which is already held in many colleges which evaluates creativity and logical thinking skills. If Suneung is not used, these kinds of exams should be used more widely. It will help students to develop creativity.

             Exams like Suneung not only lower creativity, but also hinder individual development. Getting into a good college is thought to be more important than what students want to major in. So it is common to see students selecting majors they didn’t wish for. Also, students tend to select majors that will benefit them more for the future jobs. This leaves no choice for students but to focus on Suneung. Even for students doing art, music and physical education require better scores to get into top colleges which makes them hard to good on both things. So by not having to study for Suneung, students will be able to study or develop their talent depending on their interest more freely. Also, colleges will be able to evaluate students not only by Suneung but try to truly see what student is able to do. For example, there is an admission officer system which does not, or only reflects little bit of Suneung scores and it has been successful. The admission officer system assesses students beyond their test scores and grades them on outside or inside school activities, awards, and more which shows self-improvement. This kind of system better enables colleges to recruit creative and talented students and at the same time, allows students to invest their time in self-development. So by not using Suneung, it will help student’s individual development.

              Last, since lots of students get stressed about Suneung, this can lead to social problems. Since Suneung is a test held only once a year, it gives lots of pressure to students. It is possible for the students to feels nervous and makes a mistake even if the student is very prepared. The result of the tension and errors are too harsh for students, since it is considered to decide their entire future. Most students get stressed by studying and just by thinking of Suneung. It’s not only Suneung they have to care for. They also have to get good scores on school exams. Last year for example, questions in the examination were considerably easy and this made students cry for even a small mistake they made. This stressful life leads to social problems like teenage depression and even worse, teenage suicide. It is known that the rate of teenager suicide in Korea has increased among OECD nations, where the total rate in OECD has lowered by 15% over the last decade. Most of the reason is due to pressure from studying Suneung. This shows the need for changes in exam and the problems will reduce if Suneung, the main cause of depression, disappears.

             Suneung has been taken for many years raising lots of issues. The problems like low student’s creativity, being poor at individual development and lots of social problems will somewhat disappear if college starts not to use Suneung and come up with better evaluating system. It will be impossible for colleges to change Suneung immediately however, it should try to implement different ways to evaluate students by increasing the importance of admission officer system or essay type exams.