A warning to the world

By J. M. Beach

During the 1990s free market enthusiasts pronounced a ``new" type of economy that was spreading across the globe. It was a post-industrial ``knowledge" economy focused on the development of ``human capital" and new forms of technology.

For the past 20 years the strong correlation between education, economic opportunity and social class has been investigated. Finding ways to increase educational opportunity has become a prominent public policy issue. The economic necessity of increased education, especially college degrees, has become a new ``secular faith."

Today, insecure people all across the world feel immense pressure to get more education in order to hold onto middle-class social status, let alone to seek increased economic mobility. Nowhere is this pressure felt more than in South Korea.

From a look at publicized numbers the South Korean education system looks very attractive. South Korea has one of the highest percentages of youth enrolled in both K-12 schooling and higher education. South Korea deserves credit for its highly-educated population, soaring industrial productivity and innovative technology.

But is the South Korean education system something to be emulated by other countries? No. South Korea has one of the world's most expensive educational systems, it uses an archaic curriculum and it places too much pressure on students.

In 2008 Korean families spent almost 21 trillion won on private education. South Korean families spend more on education than in most other countries, around 69 percent of the total price. And students are pushed from as early as kindergarten to not only perform well in regular schooling, but also to go to private tutors and ``hagwons" so that they can prepare for high stakes testing beginning in middle schools.

Hagwons are profiting handsomely from this compulsion to succeed academically. But most students are suffering. They study all day for seven days a week and get less than eight hours of sleep a night. These students are pushed to study and succeed on standardized tests, they are pushed to become fluent in English, and they are pushed to get into the most prestigious high schools and universities.

Students are slaves to their parents' ambitions, whether or not some students actually internalize the national obsession with ``education fever." Students are under so much pressure that a large percentage of students, somewhere between 20 to 48 percent, actively contemplate suicide each year, and a significant minority actually kill themselves because they cannot take the pressure to succeed, or the burden of failure.

And what are South Korean children actually learning in this intense educational atmosphere? Public and private schools use a ``teach-for-the-test" curriculum that focuses on the memorization of information, standardized multiple-choice tests, and test-taking techniques. Korean students rarely understand the information being taught to them, they are not taught to critically analyze information, and they cannot apply information to other contexts. Students simply become expert memorizers of de-contextualized facts that can only be used to take standardized tests. A teach-for-the-test curriculum focuses on rote memorization and muffles critical thinking and creativity, the very skills the 21st-century work force needs.

The private educational industry in South Korea is exploiting both the lack of state educational funding and the social anxieties created by ``education fever." Most hagwons are marketing new products that seem to be innovative, but behind the corporate rhetoric lies the same empty ``teach-for-the-test" curriculum found in the public schools.

Hagwons also employ ignorant foreign instructors, the majority of which have never been teachers and don't know anything about education. To compensate for these incompetent and transient teachers, most hagwons structure a rigid curriculum with monotonous classroom methods, turning education into an elaborate socialization ritual. The biggest and best English hagwons are guilty of fraud, and are merely profiting off the insecurity of parents seeking to provide a better life for their children.

Education in South Korean is a warning to the rest of the world, not a model to emulate. Beware education fever.

The writer has been a teacher and educational administrator for over fifteen years, and recently returned from working and conducting research in South Korea. Links to his books, articles, and conference papers can be found at his website at www.jmbeach.com.