Korea: Don't Railroad Changes to English Teaching Through

[Harold Schiffman]

Don't Railroad Changes to English Teaching Through

Daechi-dong in the prosperous Gangnam district of Seoul is effectively
Korea¡¯s Private Education Central, with no fewer than 183 crammers.
Suppose a crammer has 200 students and each student takes two lessons
costing W300,000 (US$1=W946) each, they pay a total of W263.5 billion
a year. The figure does not include transport, textbook and snacks.
Seoul alone has five such mammoth cram school neighborhoods ? in
Daechi-dong, Mok-dong, Junggye-dong, Apgujeong-dong and Noryangjin --
that charge enormous fees. With crammers in the capital and provinces
and extracurricular courses given at home by visiting tutors added,
private education costs for parents total W2.5 trillion per annum.

There is a set ratio by subject: 100 for English, 50 for math and 25
for Korean. The ratio has not been forced by anyone; it just reflects
the weight English occupies in our private education market. According
to that formula, annual English private education costs should be
about half of W2.5 trillion. But the Education Ministry estimates the
costs at W10 trillion, and some media surveys even at W15 trillion.
They add private English education expenses for kindergarten kids and
primary school pupils too young to attend ordinary crammers, and
expenses that householders of families separated for educational
reasons pay for their spouses and children overseas.

In these circumstances, the incoming administration has unveiled an
English-language education reform policy that envisages teaching the
language in English rather than in Korean from 2010, while eliminating
the subject from the College Scholarship Aptitude Test and
substituting a separate proficiency test, employing 23,000 English
teachers capable of teaching in English by 2013, and training 3,000
existing English teachers every year. One pundit in these pages
approved of the new English education policy, citing the singer Park
Jin-young, who is fluent in English; others say there is no need for
everyone to become Park Jin-young, saying we need indigenous singers
like Na Hoon-a and Tae Jin-ah. An element of discussing the pros and
cons of linguistic imperialism crept into the debate, and that is the
wrong direction to take.

Even if Transition Committee Chairwoman Lee Kyung-sook had not
illustrated it with her example of how she used to say ¡°olange¡±,
there has long been agreement that we need better communicative skills
rather than learning how to pass exams by rote. The problem is the
explosive rise in private education expenditures the new policy will
entail. Has the incoming administration analyzed how much more money
will have to be spent if conversation and composition are added to the
grammar, reading and listening now taught in private English classes?
The costs will more than double. If education by Korean English
teachers fails to achieve the goal of training students in English
speaking and listening, what will happen?

A short cut to reducing English private education costs is to
eliminate English from the college entrance exams. It is to transform
painful language study into enjoyable lessons. Now, some say if the
requirement is scrapped, no one will study English. But that logic is
flawed, as math-centered schools show. Still, if it can¡¯t be done,
then the incoming administration should study all possible alternative
ways of reducing the cost for families, for example by determining
whether a college applicant is successful or not instead of scoring
English tests in points or confining English education to public
education.

The private English education market already has a large number of
native-speaking teachers because parents and students prefer them. The
incoming administration should figure out which makes better economic
sense: opening our education market to primary, middle, high schools
and colleges from English-speaking countries or its own reinforcement
policy. In polls conducted prior to the Lunar New Year, 51 percent to
49 percent of the respondents opposed the new government's
English-learning policy. Nonetheless, the incoming administration is
poised to ram it through like the restoration of Cheonggye Stream in
downtown Seoul. The Left is reportedly already overjoyed, expecting
that this stubbornness will gain it plenty of votes in the general
election and with it the chance for a revival.



http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200802/200802140012.html
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