ed English learning fervor

President Park Geun-hye appears to be quite good at foreign languages: she speaks English in America, and Chinese in China.

On Thursday, however, President Park said, “Not every student has to learn English beyond the basic level, except for those who want to make careers requiring professional English proficiency,” forcing many to ask how much of English education is too much, or too little.

Park was right to point out the various adverse effects that the English learning craze ― or more exactly the obsession with getting high scores in English tests ― has on the nation, including costing several trillions of won in private tutoring costs.

Yet we are afraid the president might have been somewhat oblivious to the stark reality of Korea’s educational and social systems, in which the students’ grasp of English determines their future ― schools, jobs and maybe even spouses. The “English divide” is becoming a serious social issue between parents who can afford the huge costs and those who cannot.

Education ministry officials are nothing if they waste any time concocting a package to suit the mood of the chief executive. Their solution: making the English exams so easy in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) that students don’t have to take after-school lessons in hagwon. But nothing shows educational bureaucrats’ simplistic expediency better than this makeshift measure.

If exams are too easy, it will be impossible to distinguish good students from bad, while determining the fate of too many students by a fraction of point. Also, these officials shouldn’t have forgotten that the CSAT is based not on absolute but on relative evaluations of students. If the students cannot excel over others in English, they will shift focus to mathematics and other subjects, jamming hagwon specializing in these studies, in what they call the “balloon effect” of out-of-campus education.

So a fundamental solution President Park ordered should be found in how to help students who attend public schools and study English only at such schools can read, write and speak English without too much difficulty.

Equally problematic is the nation’s educational policy, which changes at least once, every five years when a new government takes charge. Only a few years ago, the former Lee Myung-bak administration encouraged the establishment of “English immersion villages,” but the incumbent government is discouraging children from using these expensive but not always effective facilities, to help ease financial burdens of their parents.

Compare this with farsighted Sweden, where the education ministry is preparing to teach Chinese ― which it thinks will be used as much as, if not more than, English in the world ― in secondary schools in 15 years.

Also requiring reconsideration is competition among colleges to deliver lectures in English, or “native language.” It’s a comedy why English should become a native language in Korea. This is the most pitiable confusion of ends and means, letting medium take the place of the ultimate objective, namely in-depth learning. Only people who can study difficult sciences in their own language can compete on the global stage.

And this shows in part why President Park is advised to make speeches in Korean wherever she goes.