Say 'no' to your mom (2011년 4월 10일)

어제(4월 9일) 코리아타임스의 제 칼럼 제목은 '엄마에게 '아니오'라고 말하라'입니다. 요즘 우리나라에 태어나는 어린이들 대부분은 참 불행합니다. 이르면 태아 시절부터, 아니면 돌 지나면서부터 온갖 두뇌개발과 영어 능력 습득 프로그램에 참여하도록 강요당합니다. 초등학교 1학년밖에 되지 않은 어린이들이 여러 곳의 학원에 다니며 부모, 특히 어머니의 구미에 맞는 아이로 사육됩니다. 그런 어린이들은 호기심으로 반짝이는 눈 대신 세파에 시달린 중년의 표정을 하고 있는 경우가 많습니다. 

 

제가 몇 년 전 아파트의 옥상정원에서 만난 지은이도 그랬습니다. 눈 쌓인 정원에서 눈사람을 만들던 지은이는 저보다 더 어른 같았습니다. 제가 아무도 밟지 않은 작은 눈벌판을 발견하고 기뻐하며 거기에 누워 '눈 사진'을 찍자 제게 '아이 같다'고 핀잔도 했습니다.

 

최근 한림대학교의 홍현주 교수팀이 761명의 초등학교 1학년생들을 조사한 것을 보면, 학원을 4개 이상 다니는 아이들의 30퍼센트가 우울증에 걸려 있으며, 학원을 그보다 적게 다니는 학생들의 경우 우울증 환자 수는 10퍼센트라고 합니다. 즐겁게 뛰어노느라 바빠 우울할 짬이 없어야 할 시기에 학원을 들락거리며 우울증에 걸리다니... 도무지 교육은 무엇이며 부모는 무엇일까요?

 

부모가 하라는 대로 공부 잘하는 학생이 되면 카이스트 같이 좋은 대학에 들어가겠지요. 그러나 그 학생들의 나날이 과연 살 만한 것일까요? 올들어 벌써 4명의 카이스트 학생들이 자살했습니다. 언론은 학생들이 자살한 이유가 서남표 총장 탓인 것처럼 말하지만, 그것은 비열한 비난이며 '희생양 찾기'입니다.

 

저야 본래부터 상대평가를 반대하고 경쟁엔 관심 없는 사람이지만 '국비로 공부하는 사람이 압박을 느끼지 않으면 잘못'이라는 서 총장의 말이 틀렸다고 생각하진 않습니다. 학생들의 자살은 경쟁을 부추긴 서 총장 잘못이라기보다는, 언제 어떤 상황에서도 흔들리지 않고 자기 길을 가거나 잘못된 상황을 보면 바꾸려 하는 강한 젊은이를 만들지 못한 기성세대 전체의 책임이라고 생각합니다.

 

'No (아니오)'는 인생을 자기만의 방식으로 살려고 할 때 꼭 필요한 말입니다. 어른들이 이걸 해라 저걸 해라 할 때, 전국의 모든 어린이들이 '네, 그렇게 하겠습니다' 대신 '아니오, 저는 그렇게 하지 않겠습니다' 혹은 '생각해보겠습니다'라고 대답하는 날이 어서 왔으면 좋겠습니다. 아래에 칼럼 전문을 옮겨둡니다. 

 

 

Dear Ji-eun, it is April, two months into your new grade. You must be quite grown up now but you on my mind remain the pretty little woman with premature solemnity around her. I still clearly remember our first encounter on the snow-piled rooftop garden of our apartment building. I went up there to see the trees and you were making a snowman with your brother. You two said ``Good morning” to me not impolitely but without a smile.

``So, you are not giving a mouth to him?” I teased as I wanted to break the weary masks on your faces. ``Oh, we’ve forgotten his mouth!” your brother uttered embarrassingly but you didn’t say a word, just looking at me disapprovingly like a disgruntled mother. You seemed to be asking, ``Who the hell are you? Why do you bother us?” I wished to see your real face, so I said, ``Okay, you two have a good time with the snowman. I am going to take a picture.”

Your eyes quickly moved to my hands and you grumbled instantly: ``You don’t even have a camera.” I responded nonchalantly: ``The snow will be my camera.” As I walked to the small field of virgin snow, I could sense your eyes following. ``One, two, three and click!” I dropped my body to the piled snow so that I could lie on the white bed facing the sky. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, feeling the soft landing of snow flakes on me.

When I opened my eyes, I saw you two. Your brother was apparently amused although he was fighting himself not to show. You looked genuinely confused and demanded in a high-pitched voice: ``It’s a picture?” I got up and pointed at the figure my body had created on the snow, ``Sure. Look at that! I will have one more.” This time, I plunged my front side into the snow. I saw the childlike gleam in you brother’s eyes yet you said admonishingly, ``Ma’am, you are like a child. You are not like a grown-up at all.”

Your family moved away soon and we couldn’t see each other since, but I have often thought about you. You were a busy first-grader attending four to five ``hagwon” crammer institutes in addition to the regular elementary school. From our conversation, I guessed you had lived like that for a couple of years already. You seemed to understand that life was a tiresome routine of going to hagwon and doing what you were told to do by your mother.

It is true life ``is” a process of learning, but learning is not the single component of life, Ji-eun. Life offers much more than that and the most important lesson you earn from your experience, particularly failures, than from your classrooms.

Now that you are in the fifth or sixth grade, I hope you will begin to ask questions before you say ‘yes’ to your parents and teachers. You could at least say ‘let me think’ when they instruct you to do something or implant something in your mind. When you have doubts, speak out. When you don’t agree with them, say so. If you keep on cramming yourself with all their teachings, you will never get your own face back and may live with the fatigued mask forever.

I have just read a news article that there is co-relation between out-of-school tutoring and mental health of children. Dr. Hong Hyun-ju’s research team at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital has found, from a study of 761 first-graders at five elementary schools in Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province, that long hours of extracurricular education may be associated with depression in school-aged children. The rate of children showing symptoms of depression was 30 percent among those getting four or more hours of private education compared to 10 percent among those with four or less hours of it.

I have also read reports that the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the nation, has lost four students to suicide during the first four months of this year. Specialists say KAIST students, as excellent as they may be, may not be well prepared to deal with failures and frustration.

Ji-eun, with all the education you are getting, you may end up joining the most desirable group of youths in mothers’ eyes like the KAIST students. However, too much learning in classrooms will rob you of the time you should spend elsewhere enjoying life. Most of the things you learn in those rooms belong to the past and they constitute just some portion of what you need to know to live the present. Dear Ji-eun, I long to see you again someday. on that day I would like to see a joyful face instead of the sulky one I used to come across. To remove your mask, try to say ``no” to your mother, for ``no” is the word by which one’s life truly begins.