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 Lee has a rehab plan for the country's hagwon (private language institutes) and overseas schooling dependence.

Anyone hear about this? Have you read about this? Well he's going to take action, yes he's a Man of Action, our LMB.

The key elements of his action plan: he's going to (1) see that the English-only policy is enforced; (2) encourage competition among high schools by dropping university admissions regulations; and (3) have ``easy" high school subjects, like science and math, delivered in English.

Call me a conspiracist if you like, but hagwon directors themselves might have designed this plan.

First, ``teaching English in English." A majority of the country's English teachers report that they could deliver lessons wherein the first language of everyone in the room is conspicuously absent.

But forget for a moment that this is bad pedagogy, that most trained language teachers know that this is bad pedagogy, and that this is the reason most teachers have resisted the policy. And forget what will become of competent teachers unable or unwilling to ``teach English in English."

No tarot deck is needed here. The enforcement of this policy will force many families into debt in pursuit of English-intensive preschooling, and exclude entirely those children whose families cannot afford it.

English will soon be taught from first year in elementary schools, and if Korean is not used, children who are not already familiar with English will be so lost that they won't even find the starting line.

Second, high schools and university admissions. Most high schools in the country are privately owned and administered, even if they're heavily funded by provinces. And every city or district has its elite high schools.

The kids who attend these schools expect to get into a good university. As for the kids in the other high schools, let's say that the curriculum at these schools is less challenging, and expectations rather lower.

Lee's predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, attempted to change this by forcing universities to base admissions partly on students' performance at their particular school. This was to encourage bright students to attend lower-performing high schools and thus help raise their school's academic profile.

Allowing universities complete freedom in admissions will allow universities to select from high schools of their choosing. This will in turn force middle school students to hagwon, and parents further into debt, to better their child's chances of getting into choice high schools.

Indeed, the Korean Teachers & Education Workers' Union (KTU) warns that universities may soon be looking at students' middle school records as well, which will force more elementary students into hagwon, etc.

Third, English-medium instruction in high schools. President Lee wants high schools delivering ``easy" subjects like math and science in English by 2010.

(His team has supposedly backed down on this, but if he wants it to happen, it will happen. Science and math teachers in Gyeonggi Province will be training in English this year, in preparation.)

Are these the easy subjects? Research shows that ``easy" subjects for second language use, are art, physical education, and later, geography. No doubt hagwon have already designed ``Learn Science English Here!" banners.

Now if our messiah were actually serious about education reform, he'd set up a nationwide fully-subsidized preschool system, start funding universities so that exclusion from the elite schools does not doom young people to drudgery. He would also address regional imbalances in education funding, wrest control of secondary schools from petty oligarchs, and help create learning communities that foster social, moral, and intellectual development rather than enforce regimens of testing, ranking and standardization.

Unfortunately, since teachers are abandoning the KTU ― the organization that is best placed to challenge Lee and his education-as-business model ― soon we'll all be ``service providers," encouraging failing kids to absent themselves from standardized tests so that we can receive our pay incentives, and our schools their funding.

I hope our uniforms will be tasteful.

Jason Thomas works for Gyeonggi-do Institute for Foreign Language Education in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at ajasonthomas@yahoo.ca.