The earlier, the better
By Park Moo-jong
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English is a global lingua franca. Few will dispute this.
Some years ago, a joke about languages went viral with a question: “Which is the most widely spoken language in the world?”
Many, really many people questioned, chose English without hesitation.
Yet, some others argued logically and named Chinese, noting that more than 1.4 billion people out of the world population of 7.7 billion speak it.
What a twist! They were all wrong. It's Broken English, spoken everywhere in the world. This “global” language works very well across the globe, especially among tourists speaking different tongues.
This joke ironically testifies to the importance of English as the real global language.
Precisely, English is the third most-spoken “native” language in the world after Chinese and Spanish, the most widely learned second language.
Around 60 countries use English as their official language or one of the official languages and the number of people who have learned it as a second language exceeds that of native speakers.
South Korea is no exception at all. English proficiency is a crucial factor in finding jobs or pursuing other personal life goals, especially in this society where competition is ever getting fiercer.
As a result, parents, especially mothers whose zeal for education of their children is unrivalled in the world, are very aggressive about their kids' learning English. They think the “earlier, the better” when it comes to learning a second language.
Thus, the age of kids who start to learn English is ever getting lower, even two or three. It is no wonder that kindergartens offer English classes to their “young” students.
Alas, however, our lawmakers passed a Ministry of Education-proposed bill to ban English language classes for first- and second-grade pupils at elementary schools after regular school hours to help minimize the “negative effects of early English education practices.” The legislation went into effect just a year ago.
The ban is part of a government policy, based on a 2016 Constitutional Court's ruling that teaching English “early” may hinder kids' proficiency in the Korean language.
The ministry officials came up with the strange logic that “social skills and cognitive development” should take place before starting to learn a second language, namely English.
They deserve the nickname of “signature officials of the Republic of Regulation.”
In a contradictory policy, however, the government allows kindergartens to conduct English classes not as officially registered pre-schools but as private institutions.
What nonsense!
The Prohibition of Teaching in Advance of the Government Curriculum Law, namely the prior learning act, stipulates that English education shall start from the third grade, so English classes after-school hours for first and second graders would not be allowed.
What a good law for private teaching institutes, dubbed “hagwon.” The law does not apply to them. The growing demand for early English education, although expensive, has made these outlets very popular, particularly among parents who can afford them.
More than 900,000 first and second graders of elementary schools are stripped of an opportunity to learn English after regular school hours at the cost of 100,000 won a month on average and have to go to hagwon, if they want to learn the language after school. The cost is almost triple. The “English divide” is ever widening.
Even if the government reduces the importance of English education at public so schools, the demand never decreases, rather further widening the divide.
Foreign language education, especially English, is not luxury, but an investment in human resources. It affects not only the personal income, but on the nation's international competiveness.
For instance, the United States allows foreign language classes after regular curriculum at public schools and has been encouraging foreign language learning by adopting the bilingual license formula.
Various research has found that early foreign language education before the age of seven is good for brain development, cognitive ability and sociality, even contributing to delaying dementia in later years.
According to a research team of University of Geneva, about nine percent of Switzerland's gross national product (GNP) comes from the people's multilingual ability.
Amid mounting calls for after-school English classes, Education Minister Yoo Eun-hye revealed during a parliamentary confirmation hearing in October that the ban runs against the demands of the education sector. But a revised bill to lift the ban is still pending at the National Assembly.
Now the government should solve the problem by overhauling the curriculum and persuading the legislature to act on the bill as soon as possible, timed with the beginning of new academic semester.
What is crystal clear is the fact that English proficiency is one of the most essential elements to help our growing generation survive the ever intensifying competition on international stages.
Park Moo-jong (emjei29@gmail.com) is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English daily newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter since 1974.