How Busan Grows Its People

Busan has produced actors and singers, athletes and fighters, entrepreneurs and scientists. Yet almost all of them grew in domains the school does not teach.

This essay is the 14th in Busanloop's "18 Questions for Next Busan" series.

In an age when teaching has become abundant, what a city must cultivate is not teaching but will. Ken Robinson argued that schools educate creativity out of people; Paris's École 42 admits students with no teachers and no curriculum — on will and logic alone — and places 80 percent into jobs. Busan does not fail to make talent; it fails to make a place where the talent it raised can grow. Will is not taught. It grows only where there is room to grow.

Series vocabulary chain: trust (Q9) → recognition (Q10) → infrastructure (Q11) → misalignment (Q12) → discovery (Q13) → will (Q14). The next essay asks: how does Busan gather people?