Doing away with Seoul National University

By Kim See-bong

They are raising the issue again of abolishing the best university in the country. So I want to ask them if they are in their right minds or if they think before speaking.

Or is it just for the political objective of gaining a vote from those who suffer from an inferiority complex against the best? Perhaps standardized secondary school education for half a century has contaminated their logic. So I want to throw them a few questions.

First, do you think it possible to equalize or standardize education at all, though education concerns the matter of human intelligence? It cannot be dealt with based on materialistic concepts. If you mean the democratic equality in education, it is concerned with the equality of the opportunity to receive education, not of the consequence education brings.

Second, do you believe that our society could become one free from competition without Seoul National University? Do you think it is symbolic of elitism and a sense of national disunity?

Have you ever thought the U.S. would try to remove their world-famous universities including Harvard only because they are difficult to enter, thus intensifying competition so graduates from such institutions can land a better job and live a better life? Do you think human society without competition is possible? What another nonsensical idea!

A society in which you can enjoy competition and get as much as you can out of it one you have to make if you are a responsible statesman who would beg people for a vote to run this country. Yet you take elitism requiring competition as an obstacle to remove in life. This is reduction ad absurdum.

Are you dreaming of a socialistic and communistic society, even though they have been both proved to be flops? You say you are progressive but toward what are you progressing? Rather what you're doing is retrogressive and anachronistic. Civilization is the consequence of challenge and response, as said Arnold Toynbee in ``A Study of History.”

After the closure of Seoul National University, what comes next in your order? Are you going to remove the haves from society in favor of the have-nots? And next remove education itself from people so that they may not compete? What will the final outcome of such removals? How anachronistic! Nature itself is a manifestation of harmonious competition.

Make no mistake, please. Your job is to make Seoul National University rank among universities of worldwide recognition, not to remove it. This is progress. Once the university is gone, a new one will come up to take its place to be best. This is a fact we have learned from history.

Half a century ago, there was a big reform of our education system and they removed the entrance examination to go to high school. By drawing lots, they selected students and removing competition was the justification back then. They removed local high schools of national recognition.

Let me ask you again; is there no competition among students now? Or no distinction between high schools? With only titles changed, there still exist the best high schools and as much competition to enter them.

Isn't it an instinctively innate human desire to achieve more, go higher and do better? Why aren't you sagacious enough to be proud of your university and to endeavor to improve it, not remove it.

Education is the backbone of our country and the future depends upon the consequences of our current national education. Therefore, education should be a project to foresee the century ahead, not be swayed by politically improvised populism. Seoul National University should be a source of pride, not shame.

I am really fed up with politicians of such low caliber.

The writer is the principal of Polyglot Day School in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province. His email address is glsacademy@dreamwiz.com.