Revisionist History Ep. 4 Carlos Doesn't Remember

There is a boy named Carlos., a poor intelligent child who is too mature for his age and likes math. He didn’t feel very challenged in school and now attends an elite private school with full scholarship. Then, now the main question is how did he get up the ladder? He received help from Eric Eisner’s YES program in Los Angeles, a program that identifies the most promising students, tutor them, and get them into private schools. While Carlos attended a fancy elementary school, thanks to the help of YES, he felt a bit self-conscious. He couldn’t play with others in recess because he wore shoes that two sizes large. Later, Carlos really wanted to go to Chode, but he couldn’t because his mother wouldn’t let him go. Carlos had to care of his mother and his sister. However, his mother gets imprisoned and Carlos and his sister had to live in messy foster homes. After all these difficulties, Carlos finally gets into a private school.

The story may sound touching, even inspiring. No. This story is depressing. There are tons of smart poor kids like Carlos out there and Carlos is only a one of millions. What we have to question here is ‘Does America good at capitalization as Americans think they are?’ Capitalization is the percentage of people in any group who are able to reach their potential ability. Capitalization can be used as a standard of capturing how just and successful a society is because to be ‘good’ at capitalization, social mobility must be guaranteed. Then, let’s question again. Is America (or Korea, I’ll mention this later) ‘good’ at capitalization? To find the answer, let’s go back to Carlos’ story. For a child like Carlos to go up the ladder, he needs a powerful advocate. Capitalization requires an Eric Eisner. To find opportunities, Carlos has to go to fancy ‘white’ elementary school far from his house and even there, his past follows him. The pool of low-income high-achieving kids is huge but they don’t show up in elite schools because they never get enough, not even to high school. Talent is fragile.

After listening to this podcast, I had two thoughts in my head: ‘Is Korea good at capitalization?’ and ‘How can we improve capitalization?’ First, Korea isn’t good at capitalization. There is a Korean saying, ‘A dragon rose from the brook,’ which means ‘rags-to-riches’. These days, we say that there are no more dragons from the brook since lawyers’ children become lawyers, doctors’ children become doctors, and judges’ children become judges. There is almost no social mobility left in Korea anymore. At the time of rapid economic growth, chances were everywhere. A high school graduate could study hard and become a lawyer or a president. Many business tycoons, or ‘chaebuls’ were self-made people. However, nowadays, an elite course is already set. You have to be born wealthy. Then, you go to an English preschool, private elementary school, international middle school, and private high schools with great college admission records, and Seoul National University. Finally, you get into major companies such as Samsung or get a highly-paid specialized job and you are now on the top of the ladder.

There are countless barriers along the way but let me mention just a few. The biggest problem is that education fees are extremely expensive. Poor students might be able to receive financial aids to pay for high school tuitions or lunch money. But, they can’t go to expensive private high schools or ‘hakwons’, private institutions that teach subjects taught in schools, although every other student go to ‘hakwons’. Naturally, they can’t be competitive enough for top colleges because they can’t learn those tips or information for tests and college admission. You might say that this could be overcome by studying hard on their own, but this is too idealistic because teachers in public schools, assuming that the students have already learned this stuff in ‘hankwons’, don’t teach sufficiently. Also students need lot of extracurricular activities to be competitive in college admission, but poor students just don’t have the time, because they have to take care of their family, and the information, because they don’t have money to meet private counselors.  

What are the solutions, in individual level and in national level? First, public education must be strengthened and improved so that ‘hakwons’ are not needed to understand school education and solve test problems. Second, as I said in the previous blog post, second chances must be guaranteed. According to Malcolm Gladwell, the major difference between being privileged and being poor in America is the number of chances you get. Privilege gives you second chances and therefore, disruption is not so fatal to life chances. However, for the poor children, too many things get in the way and even the smallest disruption can be fatal. Third, talented but poor children must be supported from young age so that they would not give up before going to high schools and colleges. They have to be taken care of closely and deliberately. Fourth, in the individual level, academic talent donations from privileged people are very helpful. Students of KMLA volunteers to go to local schools and teach the kids for free. We all have to acknowledge that we are extremely privileged and lucky people and we have the responsibility to share with them since it isn’t entirely ours.

I would like to quote what Carlos and his sister said in the interview. ‘Were you ever pessimistic?’ asks the interviewer. ‘No, maybe overwhelmed.,’ Carlos answers. Everything around Carlos was falling apart and he understood that the only way out is to be a ‘great’ student. So he put everything in a box and took burden above his skill. He says, ‘I definitely tried hard at school. I didn’t let it affect my scores too much.’ Then his sister says, looking back at what they’ve gone through, ‘Carlos was optimistic. He was strong enough to care for both of us. Honestly, I never thought of him as a person who would ever give up. I was never worried about him.’ In a world like this, poor intelligent kids even get their right to give up deprived from them.