The SBS Special Program “Small Miracles at the Dinner Table”
By Park Heejung
Published: April 17, 2012
Translated by Lee Mi-kyeong
How well a child is raised at home is very important for a society. It is directly linked not only to the quality of a single person’s life, but also to the health of the society.
Today, however,
the focus of childcare is only on the social and financial success of a child.
People only focus on piecemeal
solutions, not the values and
philosophies of life, as seen in the
case where they just look for whatever helps children to get higher test scores.
The SBS special
program “Small Miracles at the Dinner Table,” aired on July 26, tried to present a new childcare technique based on family dinners, but it ended up only showing another unsubstantiated
“secret method” similar to what has come before. Merely listing disordered
analyses based on overly-simple logic, it failed to take into account the real
conditions that Korean society faces.
Are family meals the secret behind high-performing
students?
The SBS program
starts with the findings of research conducted by Harvard and Columbia Universities
that children who eat with their family have a higher IQ and better school performance,
and misbehave less often. It suggests that conversations among family members
at the dinner table are very helpful for the intelligent and emotional
development of children.
The TV program
shows a practical example in which two families are having dinner with their
high-performing children, so-called “eomchina”
or “eomchinttal”─meaning “mother’s friend’s son/daughter”, as in the perfect child to which
a mother may unfavorably compare her own─who are honor
students or attending a prestigious university. Through the scene, the argument
is made that the secret method for their children’s high performance that the
two families share is family meals.
However, such a
simple conclusion as that “more family meals lead to higher IQs” is not convincing,
even if it is has Harvard’s name on it. A closer look plainly reveals the fact
that family dinners are only one way of having conversations and that dinner in
itself is not everything.
The program also shows scenes in which, when students are asked about what they
talk about with their family at dinner, they say, “Parents suddenly bring our grades
up in conversation. We get hit on the head with a spoon,” and, “They don’t just
understand us,” and confess it is very hard to just talk with them. This is a
reality of Korean society. When family members do not know how to talk to each
other equally and peacefully, the value of having meals together is in doubt.
A lot of talking
during a meal means that there has been a lot of communication freely carried
on between parents and their children at other times in daily life. This family
is likely to be a stable one in which there are intellectual and affectionate
interactions between family members. Considering this, isn’t it a more logical
conclusion that the higher development of children’s intelligence and emotion is
based on the peace and happiness of family members?
Full-time working fathers make money and stay-at-home
mothers prepare a meal?
The biggest problem with the SBS special “Small Miracles at the Dinner Table”
is that it does not pay attention to the reality faced by people who cannot afford
family dinners
The families
with high-performing sons and daughters that appeared on the program are in the
middle and upper class, are socially and economically stable and have
stay-at-home mothers. Their fathers set a fixed time to have dinner and have jobs
that make it possible to come home at that time every day.
Shown on the program as an example of
traditional Korean dinner-table education, the family dinner of the descendants of the 16th-century scholar Ryu Seong-Ryong, who are considered one of
Korea’s noblest families, is a case in point. Not only is it wondered if it is “educational”
that the family still does not allow women to have meals at the same table with
men, but just like the families with especially high-performing sons and
daughters, it is far from the life of ordinary people.
In one of the
families portrayed as dysfunctional, it is hard to prepare meals for the
children because both parents work. Family dinners that seem easy to arrange
for middle and upper classes are not that easy in the real life of low-income
families. Family members have no time to even see each other, let alone to talk
together.
Korea has the
longest working hours of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development) members. Working overtime at night is a requirement, not an
option. Increasing numbers of temporary workers is leading to greater job
insecurity and greater work intensity. Because of soaring prices, even
double-income families see their debts growing. Single-parent families,
relatively more vulnerable to the slump economy, are now struggling for a
living.
Children come
back home late at night after attending cram schools, as well as mandatory
after-school classes at their own schools. Education policies have played a
role in worsening the situation. When discussing why it is difficult for the family
to gather and eat together, these social-environmental factors should not be
overlooked.
The SBS special program introduced a campaign carried out
in Japan to make workers come back home earlier–which, of course, must also have
been possible only for full-time office workers. But as the general content of
the program was not about presenting an analysis of or solutions to the social
environment facing families, it only served to give a greater sense of
deprivation to parents who want to have happy family dinners with their kids
but cannot afford to do so. They can only sigh and ask, “What would you have us
do?”
After the
program finishes, the question arises as to whether it is worth being aired on
a public TV network. If it is important for family to have meals and
conversations together, the role of the cultural documentary is to look into
why parents have no time to spend with their children, and to present
solutions.
If society can produce
healthy parents, education at the dinner table will follow automatically. It must
not be forgotten that the cooperation of the community is necessary for children to be raised well.
*Original article:
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