Free The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley Page B

perpetuated it. It was an extreme meritocracy for children that hardened into a caste system for adults. Even when more universities opened, the public continued to fixate on the top three. There was a warning for the rest of the world. Competition had become an end unto itself, not the learning it was supposed to motivate.
    The country had created a monster, Lee told me. The system had become overly competitive, leading to an unhealthy preoccupation with test scores and a dependence on private tutoring academies. Even over summer break, libraries got so crowded that kids had to get tickets to get a space. Many paid $4 to rent a small air-conditioned carrel in the city’s plentiful supply of for-profit self-study libraries.
    Korea’s sky-high PISA scores were mostly a function of students’ tireless efforts, Lee believed, not the country’s schools. Kids and their families drove the results. Motivation explained Korea’s PISA scores more than curriculum, in other words.
    Per student, Korean taxpayers spent half as much money as American taxpayers on schools, but Korean families made up much of the difference out of their own pockets. In addition to hagwon fees, they had to pay for public school, since the government subsidy didn’t cover all the expenses. Eric’s school was not the most elite public school in Busan, but it still cost about fifteen hundred dollars per year.
    On paper, Eric’s high schools in Minnesota and Korea had somethings in common. Both Minnetonka and Namsan boasteddropout rates of less than 1 percent, and both schools paid their teachers similarlyhigh salaries. However, while Minnetonka kids performed in musicals, Namsan kids studied and studied some more. The problem was not that Korean kids weren’t learning enough or working hard enough; it was that they weren’t working smart.
    The Iron Child culture was contagious; it was hard for kids and parents to resist the pressure to study more and more. But all the while, they complained that the fixation on rankings and test scores was crushing their spirit, depriving them not just of sleep but of sanity.
collateral damage
    One Sunday morning during that school year, a teenager named Jistabbed his mother in the neck in their home in Seoul. He did it to stop her from going to a parent-teacher conference. He was terrified that she’d find out that he’d lied about his latest test scores.
    Afterwards, Ji kept his secret for eight months. Each day, he came and went to school and back again as if nothing had changed. He told neighbors his mother had left town. To contain the odor of her decomposing body, he sealed the door to her room with glue and tape. He invited friends over for ramen. Finally, his estranged father discovered the corpse, and Ji was arrested for murder.
    This ghastly story captivated the country, as might be expected, but for specific and revealing reasons. Ji’s crime was not, in the minds of many Koreans, an isolated tragedy; it was a reflection of a study-crazed culture that was driving children mad.
    According to his test scores, Ji ranked in the top 1 percent of all high school students in the country, but, in absolute terms, he still placed four thousandth nationwide. His mother had insisted he must be number one at all costs, Ji said. When his scores had disappointed her in the past, he said, she’d beaten him and withheld food.
    In response to the story, many Koreans sympathized more withthe living son than the dead mother. Commentators projected their own sour memories of high school onto Ji’s crime.Some went so far as to accuse the mother of inviting her own murder. A Korea Times editorial described the victim as“one of the pushy ‘tiger’ mothers who are never satisfied with their children’s school records no matter how high their scores.”
    As for Ji, he confessed to police immediately, weeping as he described how his mother had haunted his dreams after he’d killed her. At the trial, the prosecutor asked for