Education and how Sky Castle talks about it

Education – its meaning has changed over years and so has its technique. Now with its different types across the world, we find it extremely different to choose the right one. Pursuing education today has lost the complete idea of instilling morality within future generations due to the competitive and capitalist techniques of teaching. This shift in teaching methods has put the question “why we need to be educated” into a trivial position. Why is it that we must study? Is it to earn money? Or is it to uphold the prestige of our families? We have completely forgotten about the REAL reason: to make world a better place. One of the very best examples of this is a Korean drama I recently happened to watch that completely changed my perspective as a student on how and why to study.

Sky castle is a satirical Korean drama series starring Yum Jung-ah, Lee Tae-ran, Yoon Se-rah, Oh Na-ra and Kim Seo-hyung as the lead actors. The series talks about struggles of four housewives regarding the education of their children living in the luxurious residential community “SKY CASTLE”. The driving force of the show is the lust of the residents of SKY CASTLE to send their children to the Seoul National University (SNU), the said generator of South Korea’s oozing brilliance. The show kickstarts with the suicide of a resident when she gets to know her son running away to live with their servant girl after getting into SNU. The series then revolves around various struggles of students attending the Korean educational system, familial pressures of getting into a good university and the shady private tutor of the deceased resident’s son and how she exploits personal issues of families to destroy them.  The show uses beautiful and luxurious landscapes as its setting and portrays one of the most familiar and plausible challenges in a student’s life. Sky castle is currently the highest rated Korean drama series in cable television and is a MUST watch for all the families and Korean drama lovers. The most notable achievement of the drama is the conflicting and contradictory emotions that it has extracted from its viewers – uneasy yet suspenseful enough for us to sit through the entire venture, at the edge of the seat, biting nails. Episode after episode, the drama tightens the rope around the audiences’ neck with the gushing emotions flooding the story. The drama ends with the sighs of relief from the viewers and the concept of “Good defeats all Evil”.

This drama inspires us to change our outlook about learning. The first learning that should be taught to all students is the real reason why we get educated. It is not to make someone feel proud and someone else feel put down. The education we acquire should be a privilege to the world rather than for ourselves. It is humility and a humane heart that we should gain from our education in place of losing it. When all of this is fulfilled, only then will learning be true to its purpose.