Episode 4: "Carlos doesn't remember"

In the podcast “Carlos doesn’t remember”, it shows our depressing education system and reality. It tosses several vital questions on why the students who are really smart cannot be developed more than their present  situations. Gladwell brings the concept of ‘capitalization’ to explain our society’s situation.

 As he explained about Carlos’ tragic environment, I wondered what is to be a privileged person. I believe to be a privileged person or born in a poor family is not about individual situations nor luck. I think it is a natural cruel cycle that every society has to try to solve the problems through it. Even though Carlos had tremendous talents, he couldn’t go where he could and really wanted to go because he had to take care of his sister and his mother forced him not to go.

Actually, when I was in middle school, since I lived in a rural area, I could observe many tragic situations such as Carlos, but I thought my friends’ situations were worse, nor because of the financial problems, but they were just losing hope and don’t know that they have the superb potential deep inside them. I tried to persuade them to develop themselves and open a larger door for new opportunities, however they were just thoughtless on how smart there were. They were just thinking about how to earn more money and how they can support their families. While talking with them, it was a disaster. The thing that I got shocked the most about was that their parents were being proud and abetting their children to close the door which can lead them to unbelievable, unreachable opportunities. I could see  Carlos inside them, and I felt aghast when I wondered how many students who are really smart but can’t fully spread their wings of opportunity. A student like Carlos in Korea, it’ll be the same but may be worse. There are lots of smart and talented students in the world and just medium high class students, but what I see in Korea, the ones who are really smart are vanishing with lack of hope but the others are being more supported because they can achieve better and more sophisticated education through money. I think education has an endless about of magic that can alter mostly everything in the society, but the societies that aren’t affording and supporting on those superb students seemed unfair and wasteful.

As Malcom Gladwell states at his podcast, I believe capitalization force is really important in the society and I think it increases exponentially when it comes to the students like Carlos getting full support. Our present society is still too dark to brighten the students’ potentials which are also related to the society’s potential. Especially in Korea, what I really got shocked was that the difference of amount in education between the rich and the poor is tremendous. In middle school, I have almost never been to private academies because nobody was going, but when I came to high school, all students were attending private academies all weekends, bit the differences were larger than I thought it would be. The financial burden kept increasing, even though I knew my parents can’t afford me lots of academies costs much, they kept sending me because everyone who are placed in upper class(of money) were going private.

I think Korea has more severe problem on capitalization and tragic fundamental problems on education.