2011년 9월 22일 목요일

Education is Business.

Education is Business


     A famous educator with whom I'm personally acquainted once said; 'Our future now lies on the hands of two fields, Education and Economics'. Some people might not agree on this wholeheartedly, but I consider that it is not a coincidence that 'Investment' is the key-word that pierces through the cores of both fields. The pursuit of achieving the most desirable outcome serves as a common purpose for making investments. So unquestionably, it is common for people to adjust their ways of investing when the public throws doubts on the current method of utilizing the provided resources.
     As Economics is the field that concerns the monetary investments, Education is the field that concerns the investments made on the human capital. Therefore, we should acknowledge the criticisms targeted on public education because every reasonable doubt made by the public is considered to be an invaluable information in improving the current system. One of the distinctive comments made on the current public education system is Sir Ken Robinson's speech shared on TED.com. He points out, 'Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent not a singular conception of ability, and heart of our challenges is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence'. This inevitably leads him to criticize the current education system in which students are having trouble in realizing their potential creativity.
     Because there were many ideas that I commonly shared with him on public education, such as 'Creativity is important as literacy', I was surprised to find out the criticisms given on his speech by my peers. However, what startled me most was to observe the lack of 'Creativeness' on their criticisms. Rather than commenting the importance of the idea, for instance how his speech brought up the chronic disease widespread in our public education system, things people mostly fussed about was that they could not understand Robinson's definitions on 'Creativity' or 'Epiphany of general children's potentials' even though it is a widely-known concept in the public. Furthermore, some comments said Robinson should have proved that there is a hierarchy between subjects, such as Mathematics is valued over Arts and Music, even though it is a commonly accepted fact in the current public education system. I was Their writings were no more than the ways to show their ignorance and lack of cognition on the problem.
     Creativity is now a indispensable element which composes the modern human individual. Not only because realizing one's creative potentials helps him or her to find the job that is most suitable, but because creativity is what the current employers seek from the labor market. This means people need to achieve creative properties to become part of the 'Economically active population'. So Robinson's speech holds its significance also in the field of Economics because the current public education failing to produce creative individuals explains the current society with the ironic disequilibrium between 'Firms that want more employees' and 'People who need to be employed'
    

2011년 9월 18일 일요일

Victims of The System; Do You Exercise to Be Healthy?

    'I opened my eyes but I still had a high fever. My stomach was twitching as well. Skipping morning exercise that day seemed inevitable. Remembering that the school nurse doesn't deal with the morning exercise absence, I had no choice but to visit the dorm parent. To my surprise, he was not in the office. There was no way that I could prove that I was sick that day.
- Interview with an anonymous 16th waver -

    Stress is a dangerous thing to every highschool students in Korea, both physically and mentally. Their life is a series of uneasiness and anxiety, so the continuation of overwhelming stress could lead students to a serious illness as lots of scientific researches directly supports. It is a no wonder that a student who has a regular schedule with less stress has better academic achievements compared to his or her peers.
Morning exercise is one of the few things that KMLA students view with hatred. Not only because they have to get up early, but because of the stress they have to burden when they are sent to the student court in case they are absent or late for the exercise. And if you have lived in KMLA for long, you would learn the school's conservative manners which students' explanations and excuses are rarely accepted.
    Every KMLA student has to attend the morning exercise after they wake up around 6 a.m. The school wants to educate potential global leaders who could voluntarily develop physical strength because managing one's health to its highest conditions is an important ability of a leader, especially considering the long-term. But the students must rethink about the necessity of the morning exercise in order not to get brainwashed by the school. Do we actually improve our health conditions by the involuntary morning exercise which accepts no excuses? Is this a reasonable and a necessary part of the so called 'school tradition' which doesn't have the slightest chance of degrading the students' physical stability? A common, and unhesitant answer to this fundamental question is a NO. And this brings the major problem of morning exercise to the surface.
    Daily Exercise is always recommended to people of all ages. But we still have doubts whether we should still recommend it to students who are suffering from lack of sleep, and especially to the students who are sick that day. Facing the situations similar to the interview above, students feel desperate to skip the morning exercise. The body instinctively knows that exercising beyond its health conditions can seriously damage its normal functioning. But certain situations that make students to torture their body questions the school's attempt of its way of helping students to gain physical strength.
    People might point out that this situation can be improved by slightly adjusting the system. But there is a problem if such change was never made for about 10 years ever since the morning exercise started. A systematic problem of morning exercise presents itself when a sick student needs to get a skip-document. Just like from the interview at the beginning, the dorm parent and the school nurse both don’t try to protect the innocent students who are sick enough for the inevitable absence. If there was at least a single attempt to improve the current physical education, actively by the people who is in charge of the system, there would have been less people questioning the current way of morning exercise.
    But the most important reason that morning exercise is in doubt is because it has a bad influence on the student's health. CheongShim International Academy (CSIA) is a school that got rid of the morning exercise after the one year of its progress. The main reason that CSIA abolished the morning exercise was because the morning exercise affects students throughout their daily acts. So they changed the morning exercise system into a short time for body-stretching and massaging each others' shoulders and arms, and made its Tae-kkon-do class to be included in its regular after-noon course for students' concentration on the class. KMLA must realize that if the school administration doesn't acknowledge the possibility of such adaptations, it is hard for its students to actively cooperate on the things that the school is trying to make progress.
    But rather finding the alternatives, the school is trying to make its morning exercise more demanding after the incident that several female students fell down during the morning assembly period. The principal and the P.E. teachers say that the lack of fundamental physical strength is the reason that the girls have lost consciousness. Considering that no one in the history of CSIA has fallen during the morning assembly, it is normal for the KMLA students to question whether it is only the problem of physical strength that such situation happened. Does the school want more students to lose consciousness by Monday morning sickness? If not, it should reconsider the continuation of its unnecessary, health-consuming morning exercising period.

2011년 9월 3일 토요일

As a Writer.

Good Writing is an effective way of conveying one's thoughts and emotions in a very powerful, charimatic method. It is a collaboration of diverse strategies such as locating the right diction, choosing the adequate tone, and revising the sentence & paragraph strucutre. Such stretegic arrangement of words differs from person to person and this lets the readers to obeserve the individual features that the writing contains. As for me, my writings were never satisfactory. Whether the problem is related with the contents, grammar or vocabularies, they always left me the room for more improvement
My surrounding environment keep pushies me to become a better writer, and reach the highest of the given standards. Since Middle school and up till now, luckily I had an opportunity to study with the most gifted students all over Korea. When it came to knowledge and skills, there was always at least one friend who had an admiring talent that I constantly wanted to catch up. Writing skills was a no exception. The first time I realized that I had to improve on my writing was during peer editing time at school. In classes or during summer writing camps, I compared my writings with those of my friends and found many things that I had to keep in mind. Grammar, Style, Structure or choosing the right diction; these are the facts that still need lots of improvements and I’m willing to put my best effort on advancing my writing skills as it is my long-term goal.
To introduce my writing style in one word, it would be ‘Scholar-like’ or ‘Academic’. To help you understand what this means, I chose my term paper as the first writing to be posted. As you can see, it is not a kind paper which is filled with wordy expressions but words and sentences that are straight to the point. Common thing about this type of writers is that their writings are comparably harder to read than the others. Also, the writers usually have the knowledge beyond what it appears in their writing. This means I put more time on my writings compared to my peers, which might be serious problem in the future because fast organization of your thoughts is also a requirement to become a good writer. But as for now, I believe that investing my time on my writings is very essential. “Practice makes perfect” is a cliché that every writer has to keep in mind especially the type of writers such as myself. Hard work and strict time-scheduling is the only way that I can enhance my level of writing.
A piece of writing is one of the easiest ways of showing who you are. It is very similar to your facial expressions since they both are not very easy to hide. Whether you have intended or not, your ideologies, sense of values or political stance all dissolves into one, creating a group of ideas that represents yourself. Indubitably, this was the reason why I became so interested on advancing my writing. Better writing meant that the reader can grasp a clear and strong impression of me which can lead to more willing consents toward my writing.
 But simple concurrence of opinions and feelings is not the only thing that I pursue in my writing. Gaining people’s trust by my writing is my ultimate goal. It would be great to have the ability to make other people convinced which could, in the near future, provide me the opportunity to share opinions about serious, yet interesting topics with many others.

Tackling Health Inequality; Finding the Way to Overcome Structural Violence in Healthcare Systems

Tackling Health Inequality
<Finding the way to overcome Structural Violence in Healthcare Systems>

Ko, Seong Jun
16th Waver 10b2

Teacher : Mr. Johnson


Term paper: Tackling Health Inequality

Ko, Seong Jun
10b2
Contents

1)     Observation on Health inequality
Income inequality works as a direct cause to the depreciation of society’s overall healthcare service.
2)     Investigating for the solution on Health inequality #1
Observing the problems of the Korean Government’s welfare and healthcare system
- Need for the change in government policy
3)     Investigating for the solution on Health inequality #2
Homeostatic means of Noblesse-Oblige on Health Welfare System
– Income inequality attacks the health of the topmost income level
4)     Conclusion / Envision
Envisioning the future by coming up with a adequate solution on Health Inequality

Observation on Health Inequality in Korea
– Income inequality decreases society’s overall healthcare

‘From cradle to Grave’
This phrase is usually known as the description of the England’s social security policy since World War II. Sadly, this phrase is recently used in Korea to describe the chronic inequality in healthcare. From newborns to elders, unequal health situations depending on one’s income, a.k.a. health inequality, is a serious fact, but is dealt with unfortunately as a surreptitious matter to be manipulated by the social authorities for the maintenance of political power.
What is the status of Korea’s current health inequality? There are two factors we have to consider to answer this question; how much value does the Korean Government put on the importance of the health inequality agenda and how seriously does the income inequality in Korea hurt its citizen. The Korean Government has addressed its general healthcare plan by 2003 and 2007 and is in the process of making its 3rd healthcare plan. According to the first version of the 3rd plan which was announced last November, one of the main goals of the general healthcare plan was to achieve health equality. This goal was previously set in the plan of 2007, but none of these plans had specific policies which could actually enhance public health equality. Below are specific evidences that shows the chronic inequality on health and income among Korean citizens.

1.    Income inequality indicators

Income index – shows the gradual progress of Korea’s income inequality
          (Korea. Domestic Household's economic Tendencies. , 2010./)

The graph below is the ratio between the total incomes sum of the 20% of the Korean population who earn highest incomes with the 20% of the Korean population who earn lowest incomes. As you could see, it is getting higher even when the tax(the second graph) and the social welfare system(the third graph) is considered.


(Korea. Domestic Household's economic Tendencies. , 2010./)


2.     Report of Professor Son, MeeAh in Kangwon University – Correlation between income inequality and cancer rate. This proves that if income is low, the cancer rate tends to increase. Also the report shows that the people who die because of cancer has mostly low income. (MeeAh, Son. "Correlation between income inequality and cancer rate." Kangwon University)

3.     Correlation between Income – obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes & Academic background - obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes - Total of 8 graphs


(YeongJeon, Shin. "2009 report of solving health inequality." 2009)

This graph directly shows that income inequality is a serious issue in Korea.

Investigating for the solution on Health inequality #1
Observing the problems of the Korean Government’s welfare and healthcare system
- Need for the change in government policy

Report of English Government in 2000 “NHS cancer plan” analyzed that the main factor causing cancer is smoking and one’s food preference which are closely related to one’s social and economical background. This recommends that Korea has to stop people from smoking by solutions such as increasing the tax on cigarettes. Also Korean government could start a campaign to stop people from eating unhealthy foods. By forcing the firms to exactly state which ingredients are used in the products they sell, the consumers could be protected from the danger of eating unhealthy foods. (England. Department of Healthcare. NHS cancer plan. , 2000)


Investigating for the solution on Health inequality #2
Homeostatic means of Noblesse-Oblige on Health Welfare System
– Income inequality attacks the health of the topmost income level
The report of Nottingham University showed that adequate redistribution enhances the healthcare of the topmost income level. “Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” studied on the relation between income distribution and citizen’s health conditions.



(Richard, Wilkinson. Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger

The expected life span of a U.S citizen is 77.3 years. U.S. has the highest GDP per capita, but the expected life span is smaller than Costa Rica, which only has the 1/5 of the GDP per capita of U.S. The analysis of the Dr. Wilkinson is this. ‘As countries achieve higher incomes and standard of living, the direct relation of economic development and expected life span becomes unclear. Moreover, the correlation of the two factors eventually disappears as the GDP reaches the $20,000”. The main concern here is that Korea is also in the group that reached $20,000 GDP. Which shows that redistribution helps to increase the life span of the citizens.

Conclusion : Coming up with a solution on Health Inequality

The adequate mix between Government policy and voluntary redistribution of the wealth is recommended. Both policies can give positive results in curing the health inequality. The government should let the citizens, especially the wealthy ones, that redistribution is the way of maintaining the health of the citizens.

REFERENCE

1.Korea. Domestic Household's economic Tendencies. , 2010.
2.MeeAh, Son. "Correlation between income inequality and cancer rate." Kangwon University
3.YeongJeon, Shin. "2009 report of solving health inequality." 2009
4. England. Department of Healthcare. NHS cancer plan. , 2000
5. Richard, Wilkinson. Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
6.Serial ariticle Doublehelix of Death and Poverty." Hankyoreh Newpaper