"hide the ball......the teacher's coming!"

As I was walking home from the Uni on this refreshing spring afternoon, one of the 3rd year students from Daeil Foreign Language High School (one of the highest ranked in the country) called out to me from the basketball courts: 

"Hey.... you remember me?"

"Yeah - we played ball together a couple weeks ago."

"Yeah that's right."

After some chit chat I asked him when he normally plays ball with his mates.

"Oh we don't play -we're not allowed to."

"What do you mean you're not allowed to play basketball?"

"We are third year students so we have to focus on studying for the exam."

So of course I'm thinking this is insane, but I already know that these kids stay at the school until 10 or 11 pm every day so maybe he is simply saying that there is no time allotted into their schedules for ball - just too much studying.

"So how do they....stop you from playing?"

"Well if a teacher sees us playing during lunch break or dinner break----

(wait - wha??? you mean you finish your sandwich early, grab a ball to shoot some hoops, and this is illegal?)

-----they tell us to put the ball down and [go do something else]."

"Wow.  That's amazing."

"Yeah so we have to play when they're not watching....and when they come over we pretend like we weren't playing."

"So they want you to study all of the time?  Even during lunch break?"

"No it's not that - they think that playing basketball will [detract from our concentration on the final exam]."

?!?!?!?!

What can be said?  Korean's superior education philosophy wins again.  But I had to ask him....

"So you told them this was a stupid idea right?  That little breaks to play basketball will clear your mind and help you study better, right?"

[laughs]  "You know they have done it this way for 30 years......."

And he's right - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Or wait a minute.....hmmm.....