Leadership and education

By Bernard Rowan

One unheralded mark of Korea as an advanced nation is the role that education plays in the leadership of the nation. Korean leaders and the public take stock in higher education. Korea insists on well-educated leaders. This ingredient supports the nation's positive trajectory. And Korea's Confucian heritage is a key reason for this.

Take a look at current and recent presidential cabinets, the ranks of successful industries and corporations, and at Korea's national and provincial lawmakers. There you'll see the coin of leadership and education today. In South Korea, there's no skepticism toward well-educated people serving in government.

We find the origins of this culture in Confucius and Korean Confucianism. Yi Hwang, Yi I, and Jeong Yak-yong adapted Confucius' ideas to the Korean context. The Confucian scholar-bureaucrat was a prominent member of Joseon society and past Korean kingdoms, to say nothing of China's Confucian culture. Their governments featured many ranks of state-certified officials. They weren't bookworms or wallflowers.

Korean emperors and kings needed government officials to know Confucian texts and apply his sayings. The authority of Korean leaders grew out of their ethical and political knowledge. People recognized learning, academic and practical, as the right qualifications for government.

Aspiring leaders studied to pass the state examinations (gwageo). These exams were no joke! I have attended reenactments at Changdeokgung Palace. Those detailed ceremonies, carefully produced, suggest a sense of what the real exams represented. Korean juniors mastered Confucian texts and used them in their world.

We no longer live in a "Confucian world." We call Joseon Confucianism a form of neo-Confucianism. Many criticize Confucian ideas. Korea today is a democracy, a powerful economy, and a popular global culture. No one wants to look, dress, or act like a yangban ― let alone talk about others that way! It is not Korean state ideology. Civil service exams don't focus on Confucius. Reenactments of Confucian rites carry historical meaning.

Nonetheless, respect for the Confucian idea of the educated leader remains. The intellectual keys have multiplied, but the pathway to leadership through education remains. I count seven former professors on Park Geun-hye's cabinet. Another served as university president. I'd wager the same was true of previous cabinets under Lee and Roh.

We'd have to search hard to find many without formal education at university. Korean people want their political leaders to be change agents for the arts and sciences. They want leading engineers and well-cultivated minds and hearts that to frame public policy.

Despite criticisms of Korean education today, Korean society boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Families invest great sums in educating children for success. National exams track Korea's high school students to many excellent universities.

Thousands of Koreans attend the best universities worldwide. Korean parents still believe and invest in education. They represent the Confucian idea that with knowledge goes responsibility. Korean morals now and then join lifelong learning and service to others in training for leadership.

Korean leadership through education includes friendship based on respect for learning. Confucianism in the past created a basis for networks of future leaders through the gwageo and its social pathways.

We also see its face today when students interact with their professors. Students care about what a kyosunim (professor) says. When a professor enters a building or classroom, there are obvious displays of respect. Do you know the difference between Korean and American professors and their students? The American professor holds the elevator door for his students.

The distance separating students and professors also fades in places. My Korean professor colleagues make friendships with their students, just as their professors did with them. This socialization builds solidarity among professor and students.

It transitions young adults to the world beyond their families. It also invites new generations of professors and researchers into networks of learning and attainment. We shouldn't underestimate how these behaviors extend appreciation for learning throughout Korea's population.

In the United States, people don't think of professors as leaders. Many folks say American professors think a lot but don't do much. We value other professions such as business or investment in the profile future leaders. Many professors don't know how to run a large-scale organization. Many of us would make poor leaders.

The knowledge society is a fiction (or worse) if its leaders do not reflect higher learning. How else do we arrive at cultures of innovation? To devalue advanced education as a basis for leadership ignores the investments in learning that all stable societies should make.

Korean leaders prepare future generations to continue the path of progress and take on the roles that their parents and grandparents have held before them. How? The short answer is by keeping leadership and education two pillars of Korean society and self-understanding.

Bernard Rowan is assistant provost for curriculum and assessment, professor of political science and faculty athletics representative at Chicago State University, where he has served for 20 years.