When a student of mine called me to ask for some advice, I listened calmly, expecting him to inquire about his grades or request that I look over one of his essays.

Instead, his dilemma was a rather unique one. He had decided to apply to Swarthmore, a top-ranked liberal arts school in America, and wanted to submit a rock album that he had been recording but that was still incomplete.

Not only was his counselor against the student’s decision to apply to Swarthmore, insisting that his scores were not high enough for such a top-notch school ranked on par with Harvard in the liberal arts, but his mom also felt that the album wasn’t good enough in terms of artistic quality to submit as a supplementary material.

I told him to send me some of the songs by email and that I would give him some feedback after listening to them. I did not expect much and begrudgingly listened to what I felt were bound to be some mediocre pieces of music.

As I downloaded a song of his entitled “Outcast” and started to play it, I was not prepared in the least for the whirlwind of emotions that followed. The song itself began with a slow melancholic beat strummed from a guitar, similar to that of a dirge or a requiem, and the lyrics streamed out with a painfully heart-wrenching cry: “I have no place to go with nothing but sorrow, my spirit scarred and sore, so helpless and so poor. My tomb seems to be near; it fills me up with fear; no one to rely on ‘cause everyone is gone. Alone in this world that is so cold and black…”

It was clearly apparent at this point that the kid had not written this song as a means to impress the school or to embellish his college resume; it was an agonizing means of self-expression written from the bottom of his soul to communicate the pain and isolation he had endured throughout his life, a desperate plea for someone to comfort him in his time of need and hurt.

I could not hold back a deluge of tears that overwhelmed me emotionally and told him to submit the song regardless of what his mother or anyone else said ― that he should send it, unrefined simply as it is, even if it meant being rejected because of doing so. I told him that the fear of failure was worse than failure itself and that he should express his individuality and creativity with pride and dignity regardless of the outcome.

What this student and so many other students in our schools who experience the same feeling of alienation and the paralyzing fear of failure need are people who can nurture and encourage them with a heart of compassion and understanding, not a rigid yardstick that measures the value of a student based on superficial test scores or grades but ultimately deprives them of their true inner worth and creative flair.

Suicide rates among students in South Korea are skyrocketing with no signs of slowing down, bullying is becoming an ugly social malaise that permanently scars the souls of thousands, and the ominous taboo that nobody wants to show but that everyone feels, are the inevitable consequences of our failures as educators and adults to show our children a better way.

It is not enough to simply revamp our educational policies every other year or build more schools that ostensibly provide better and more equal educational opportunities to all students. It is time to start reassessing our true role and moral responsibility as educators and teachers and to start treating our children with the respect and integrity that they deserve.

It is high time to recognize that if the future of even one child or student is filled with complete darkness and hopelessness, then the future of our society as a whole is also in dire straits. 

By Jun Kim

Jun Kim is an English teacher at a private English language academy in Seoul. ― Ed.