Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Online learning deepens education inequality between haves, have-nots
An elementary school student prepares for online classes with his mother at home in Yongsan, Seoul, in this April 20 photo. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
More than 60 percent of parents feel the ongoing shift toward online-based learning during the coronavirus pandemic has deepened inequality in education between haves and have-nots, a survey showed Tuesday.
The parents also said that online learning prompted by school closures exposed the technology divide.
A civic group, called World Without Worries About Private Education, conducted an online survey on 1,000 adults aged 18 or older nationwide and released the results on Tuesday. According to the survey, 62 percent of respondents said they agreed with the claim that full access to online learning is far from universal and that students who are poor are less likely to have access to the key tools and experiences they need to attend school online.
The figure is nearly twice as high as the 32.4 percent who answered that they disagree. In particular, 63.8 percent of those in their 40s and 66.5 percent of those in their 50s agreed that online learning exposed inequality.
When asked whether students can understand the content of their studies well through only online classes, 65.4 percent said they “do not understand well.”
In order to bridge the education gap caused by the COVID-19 crisis, 63.9 percent of respondents said that a law related to education should be enacted. By region, 79.1 percent of respondents in Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang Province said the relevant law is necessary, while 68.9 percent of those in Gyeonggi Province and Incheon agreed, followed by those in Seoul with 66.6 percent.
“We need to establish a special law to understand the structure in which parents' backgrounds are passed down,” an official of the civic group said in a statement.
“Blind recruiting methods should be applied to all companies and entrance examinations while enacting a child human rights law that restricts early private education for infants and toddlers.”