Dear President Obama
By Choi Tae-hwan
Mr. President, you have often eulogized about Korea's education system.
What would you say, however, if American children were driven into a hell of private tutoring, juggling their time by going to four or five different private institutes for piano, Taekwondo, math, English and writing lessons after school?
What if American middle and high school students were not only forced to memorize a great number of Spanish words and grammatical sentence structures, but were also trained to pick out correct answers for the sole purpose of obtaining high scores without learning how to actually speak the language at all?
What if American high school students were obliged to remain and study at their schools for obtaining high scores and entering good universities from the early morning (7 a.m.) till midnight almost every day? What if there were no sports and creative activities taught at the elementary and secondary levels?
``I just want to mention the importance not only of students but also of parents, as in the case of South Korea," President Obama stated at a forum in Washington, D.C. on the ``Educate to Innovate" campaign for U.S. excellence in science, technology, engineering and math education. He went on to say, ``Korean students don't spend much time playing video games and watching TV programs and they endeavor to study math, science and foreign languages. They also study at schools one month more than American students. And so Americans have to envy the hard studying of Korean students at schools and the enthusiasm and fever for children displayed by Korean parents."
A few weeks ago, I was surprised and pleased to hear that you lauded Korean parents for their enthusiasm for children's education and Korean students for their zeal and perseverance to attain high scores and to enter good high schools and universities, in triggering the campaign of ``Educate to Innovate." What an embarrassment for the President of the United States, the most powerful country in the world, to tout the Korean educational system! But was I truly pleased or embarrassed to watch this proclamation on TV?
Dear President Obama, is it okay if I were to ask you how much you really understand the Korean educational system or the real circumstances surrounding English language classes in Korea? I wonder if you know how many students there are in a typical English classroom in Korea. Do you think it is possible for one teacher to effectively teach one-to-one interaction for the purpose of learning communicative competence with more than forty students in a class? Do you realize that Koreans are some of the poorest in the world at effectively communicating in English even though they are exposed to English classes for more than 10 years during their elementary and secondary school education? Do you know why Koreans are so poor at English speaking? I wonder if you know that Korea has had no Nobel Prize laureates in science till now.
It is well known that Korean high school students are driven into an exam-hell of cramming and memorization rather than creativity and humanity because Korea is thought to be preoccupied with becoming a society of test-oriented, product-based, memorization-centered education as opposed to a humanity-oriented, process-based, creativity-centered education.
As a result, Korean students are trained to become like robots for achieving high scores on exams, as opposed to being excellent English communicators and problem-solvers, which is said to have resulted in a lack of motivation and proficiency in creative thinking and learning, poor language communicative competence, as well as the non-existence of any Nobel Prize laureates in science.
Mr. President! Is it true that you consider Korea to be a good role model for American educational innovation? Do you really want American foreign language classrooms to be jammed with more than 40 students? Are you willing to spend a great deal of money on your children's private tutoring for many hours every day? Do you hope American students will be trained to be exam machines for high scores through sacrificing their creativity and humanity?
I wish I could be pleased to hear that Americans are envious of the Korean educational system and environment because it promotes motivation, creativity and humanity rather than focusing on memorization, cramming and exam scores. Then Korea would truly become an international hub for promoting all aspects of the economy, education and society in the 21st century.
The writer is an English teacher at Jeonnam Middle School in Gwangju. He can be reached at cth0707@hanmail.net.