There are a lot of things about Korea I don't like, but the thing I hate the most is the obsession with education. Education, is of course, quite important in raising yourself in the great Ladder of Success, but the thing most people forget is that the education taught in schools is not real education. Education taught in schools is merely meant to put you in the right mindset to learn what you really want to learn.

The discipline that my parents forced when I was younger (of which I was quite resentful during my high school years, but appreciate now) merely set the stage for me to pursue "real" education in things I love ... to help prepare me to go out into the "real world" and compete.

In any case, I received an e-mail from the wonjangneem (head principal) at my hakwon (private school). It was addresssed to the teachers at my school (specifically me and Joseph, since we are the only SAT teachers).

Apparently one of the parents lodged a complaint against our school to both the wonjangneem and the main SAT branch in Apgugeong (we're just a satellite branch) ... saying we were "talking about non-SAT stuff in class" and the "pace of homework" was not satisfying.

Now, let me say here what the kids are subjected to on a daily basis in our SAT program.

The program is 4 hours long (2 hours of reading or writing, and two hours of verbal and math) and are also required to learn 75 vocabulary words a day. They are assigned closer to one hour of verbal lesson a day and 30 minutes of math lesson every two days (3 lessons a week, each lesson is supposed to be 30-40 minutes, although some students take more time than that). And that is just my class. They are also assigned massive reading/writing assignments by Joseph (I know for a fact it's at least 2-3 hours a day worth of stuff).

So the "pace of homework" is definitely NOT slow or "delayed" in any way.

Now, understand that Korean parents, in their effort to deflect the actual burdens of parenting onto anyone willing to accept the burden, decide to enroll their kids in as many hakwon classes as possible.

So these poor kids, on top of having to be here for 4 hours, are usually enrolled in many other classes, all that assign hours of homework on a daily basis.

These kids get back home at about 9pm and begin studying... they barely sleep to finish their homework, then show up for class, dead tired.

So I decide that I should try to keep these kids awake (they learn nothing while sleeping), I try to be funny and tell things that might really interest them. And parents complain?

Excuse me if your short-sightedness prevents you from realizing that a SAT class is a full-time commitment and you overextending a kids natural ability to study and learn is not resulting in improving grades ... but the blame should not fall on me.

But yeah, "Mokdong" moms are really scary. They don't know, but they're all control freaks, and that makes a dangerous combination.