Korea: President Lee ’s Education Reform

[Harold Schiffman]

President Lee's Education Reform
By Jason Thomas
Critics say President Lee Myung-bak's policy proposals will worsen,not alleviate, the burden of private education costs. Apparently Leehas a rehab plan for the country's hagwon (private languageinstitutes) and overseas schooling dependence. Anyone hear about this?Have you read about this? Well he's going to take action, yes he's aMan of Action, our LMB. The key elements of his action plan: he'sgoing to (1) see that the English-only policy is enforced; (2)encourage competition among high schools by dropping universityadmissions regulations; and (3) have ``easy" high school subjects,like science and math, delivered in English. Call me a conspiracist ifyou like, but hagwon directors themselves might have designed thisplan.
First, ``teaching English in English." A majority of the country'sEnglish teachers report that they could deliver lessons wherein thefirst language of everyone in the room is conspicuously absent. Butforget for a moment that this is bad pedagogy, that most trainedlanguage teachers know that this is bad pedagogy, and that this is thereason most teachers have resisted the policy. And forget what willbecome of competent teachers unable or unwilling to ``teach English inEnglish." No tarot deck is needed here. The enforcement of this policywill force many families into debt in pursuit of English-intensivepreschooling, and exclude entirely those children whose familiescannot afford it.
English will soon be taught from first year in elementary schools, andif Korean is not used, children who are not already familiar withEnglish will be so lost that they won't even find the starting line.Second, high schools and university admissions. Most high schools inthe country are privately owned and administered, even if they'reheavily funded by provinces. And every city or district has its elitehigh schools. The kids who attend these schools expect to get into agood university. As for the kids in the other high schools, let's saythat the curriculum at these schools is less challenging, andexpectations rather lower.
Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, attempted to change this by forcinguniversities to base admissions partly on students' performance attheir particular school. This was to encourage bright students toattend lower-performing high schools and thus help raise theirschool's academic profile. Allowing universities complete freedom inadmissions will allow universities to select from high schools oftheir choosing. This will in turn force middle school students tohagwon, and parents further into debt, to better their child's chancesof getting into choice high schools.
Indeed, the Korean Teachers & Education Workers' Union (KTU) warnsthat universities may soon be looking at students' middle schoolrecords as well, which will force more elementary students intohagwon, etc. Third, English-medium instruction in high schools.President Lee wants high schools delivering ``easy" subjects like mathand science in English by 2010.  (His team has supposedly backed downon this, but if he wants it to happen, it will happen. Science andmath teachers in Gyeonggi Province will be training in English thisyear, in preparation.)
Are these the easy subjects? Research shows that ``easy" subjects forsecond language use, are art, physical education, and later,geography. No doubt hagwon have already designed ``Learn ScienceEnglish Here!" banners. Now if our messiah were actually serious abouteducation reform, he'd set up a nationwide fully-subsidized preschoolsystem, start funding universities so that exclusion from the eliteschools does not doom young people to drudgery. He would also addressregional imbalances in education funding, wrest control of secondaryschools from petty oligarchs, and help create learning communitiesthat foster social, moral, and intellectual development rather thanenforce regimens of testing, ranking and standardization.
Unfortunately, since teachers are abandoning the KTU ― theorganization that is best placed to challenge Lee and hiseducation-as-business model ― soon we'll all be ``service providers,"encouraging failing kids to absent themselves from standardized testsso that we can receive our pay incentives, and our schools theirfunding. I hope our uniforms will be tasteful.
Jason Thomas works for Gyeonggi-do Institute for Foreign LanguageEducation in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached atajasonthomas at yahoo.ca.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2008/03/137_20531.html
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