There are a great number of students who are studying baduk to become professional players. Thus, achieving professional baduk players’ certification is getting more difficult and competitive. Among the students, only 120 boys and 30 girls can join the Korea Baduk Association’s training system called ‘Yeon-gu-seng’ (Insei in Japanese). To survive at the cutthroat system, most of the Yeon-gu-sengs study baduk approximately 9 hours a day. Some people insist that we should allow the prodigies (Yeon-gu-seng and the students who are trying to get into Yeon-gu-seng) to study baduk without going to school in order to give them a better chance to succeed at being professional baduk players. Other people, however, argue that every student must go to school because the school education is essential to our lives. I will discuss both points of view and present my opinion in this essay.

   To begin with, there is a saying that “Better best at one thing than good at everything”. It implies that we had better focus on one specialty instead of trying to be good at many things. Although school is a perfect place to learn diverse studies, it is not always good place to concentrate on one certain field. Many people agree that sacrificing something is indispensable to achieve goals. The prodigies have discovered their talents. Forcing the prodigies to go to school may get in the way of their top priority of becoming a professional player. Why waste time with the general school education if they could not get enough value from it in return to their precious time?

   Moreover, most strong and famous players in the world became professional at younger age than that of other professional players by avoiding their school work. The fact indicates that the younger students have more room to improve and are able to learn faster. I think the conclusion is clear: students who study baduk more when they are still young and get professional certification earlier will become stronger players. However, according to the data from Korea Baduk Association, the average age of new professional players has gone up significantly from 17.0 in 1998 to 19.2 in 2008. Not only for bring up good professionals, but for making the top level's players, we need to let the promising baduk students go to their baduk academies instead of school.

   On the other hand, the students will miss important subjects and social skills by not going to school. There is more to school education than learning literature and mathematics. Students are supposed to learn how to behave with others, understand the society, and how to respect other people's differences as well. Yet, studying baduk does not require logical speaking or cooperation, but independence. For instance, students do not have to make sociable conversations when playing baduk. Besides, the students often avoid being friends with their peers, because their peers are actually potential enemies. They must compete with each other and there are always a winner and a loser. Consequently, many students who study only baduk have this kind of problems. They are neither sociable nor talkative. These factors make them less sociable and as a result, they frequently fail to develop confidence to mingle with others. These reasons validate the view that every student should go to school.

   In conclusion, I personally believe that the prodigies should decide for themselves whether they will go to school or not. Students should have talents and plans to omit going to school. These can be seen by the teachers and the parents. However the more important condition is whether the students have great passion and desire for baduk, which can be determined by only the students themselves. I do not think that other people can make this determination, even with more wisdom and life experiences. In addition, pushing students to follow their teachers and parents’ decisions can cause unnecessary resistance. Above all, it is the students who will live the life and take the responsibility of the choices. No matter how much they love their child, they cannot live their child’s life. Also, having the prodigies choose their own life paths would motivate them to be responsible for their choices. Therefore, I believe the parents and the teachers should explain in detail to the students both the advantages and the disadvantages of going to school at the right time and give them a chance to make the right decision for themselves.