Nation Needs to Rethink Its Educational Goals, Methods

Here is another example of how a policy removed from reality can produce a result exactly opposite to its intention.

Signs are now increasingly clear that the results of the first national academic achievement test for grade-schoolers in decades have been manipulated by not just a few schools or areas, but by many more schools and their supervising agencies across the country.

As President Lee Myung-bak reaffirmed in his radio address, Monday, the standard achievement test was supposedly aimed at grasping the exact situation of the nation's educational reality and providing ``custom-made'' teaching services for students on widely varied levels of scholastic attainment.

Actually, schoolteachers and even their inspectors were busy hiding their students' ``real'' levels, either by forcing underachievers to stay away, or by downright phony-up of scores. Triggering this malfeasance was the education ministry's pronounced principle of reflecting the results in government subsidies and personnel management of principals and their deputies.

This kind of fiasco had been fully expected since the government put forth a lot of carrots and sticks for this test, while leaving its appraisals to schools and their inspection agencies. It is not so surprising, though, as pushing ahead with a new program without sufficient preparation has characterized the Lee administration over the past year. Most Koreans must simply be hoping ― not so convincingly ― the second year will be different.

President Lee ordered the Cabinet to supplement shortcomings to ensure its perfect operation next year, which can be done by leaving it to objective private appraisers under far stricter government supervision.

A more fundamental question, however, should be about the wisdom of continuing the attainment test, which critics say is nothing but the grading of all of the nation's elementary and secondary schools from first to last by a uniform test.

In his address, President Lee stressed the need for universities to select students with more creative thinking and growth potential instead of those getting the highest marks in tests. If he really meant it, he should instruct his aides to discontinue the test as soon as they finish gathering essential facts.

The experiences of foreign countries have shown that standard tests have done more harm than good for their education systems, by creating quasi-markets among schools and widening the education divide rather than narrowing it. Japan and Britain introduced it half a century and a decade ago, respectively, but virtually dropped it, or sharply eased its enforcement, by leaving it to regional educational offices. Unlike here, both have long-refrained from making their results public for fear of adverse effects of the ``naming-and-shaming'' policy.

All this is related with the nation's desperate efforts to discern excellence from mediocrity in the public education system. Whether education should be aimed at cultivating whole persons or industrial warriors, as many executives here say, still remains in inconclusive debate. Even if national competitiveness is the keyword in education, what enhances the competitiveness is not endless competition in education, but the education based cooperation and consideration of others, as shown by the countries with the most advanced educational systems in the world, such as Finland.

Surveys say 70 percent of Finnish students have found studying interesting, while 60 percent of Korean students wish they had been born in other countries.

President Lee should think twice.