The end of "dragons ascending from the sewers"

Ultra-high-stakes testing and private tutoring have created a pressure-cooker for students and parents in South Korea. The costs of face-to-face exam preparation make such courses available only to the rich. However online cram-course Web sites offer only partial relief: 

Last year, South Korea spent 55 trillion won, 6 percent of its gross domestic product, on public education. But private education expenditures amounted to an additional 20 trillion won, a burden that has been cited as a factor in South Korea’s low birth rate. Eight of every 10 students from elementary school through high school take after-school classes from private tutors or at cram schools, online or offline. Offline cram school courses cost up to five times as much as their online counterparts.

One major problem--and it's a problem anywhere that test preparation and high-stakes testing are the principle means of securing a child's future--is that high rates of spending on education take place in a "gray market" that distorts expenditures and organization in public education. Take that additional ~2 percent of GDP that's spent on private education (exam prep) and channel it back into the public-education system and you have the wherewithal to create schools with worldclass teachers and learners that are truly egalitarian.

This _doesn't_ mean that you forego Web-based content delivery, or even that you foreswear rock-star test-prep teachers. Use every means available, but make those resources available to all. 

Scan Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. Gladwell makes a pretty convincing argument _against_ exceptionalism. From WA Mozart to Bill Gates, the titans of achievement who have emerged among us have benefited from a confluence of advantage, timing and context (as well as from vision, hard work, and in some instances extraordinary gifts). 

Accelerating our economic and cultural progress (and don't we need to do that!) is far more dependent on our shared development than it is on the development of a select few. 

To revise the Korean education adage in the title of this post: If we improve conditions in the sewers, more dragons will ascend.