By Cho Jae-hyon
City Editor
In the past, university students led pro-democracy demonstrations against authoritarian rulers. Only after students bled on the streets, beaten by baton-wielding riot police, and were put in jails, did professors or religious leaders come forward to protest the government's trampling of human rights and democracy.
Students were the first group to take to the streets when democracy was threatened by bad governance.
Things are wholly different today. They are no longer active participants in any type of rally, let alone organizing or leading them. They were invisible when millions of people turned out to pay tribute to the late former President Roh Moo-hyun, who took his own life while being investigated for bribery allegations.
Office workers, laborers and housewives are filling the gap. Tens of thousands of professors, teachers and religious leaders have signed statements or declarations denouncing the Lee Myung-bak administration for backtracking on democracy. They are calling for the Lee administration to change the framework of its economic, education and other key polices.
Of course, it is different from the old days when dictators or military juntas ruled the country. Still, the Lee administration is obviously restricting people's freedom of speech and assembly at least in the eyes of the signatories to the declaration. Whether or not their claims hold ground depends on whom you ask.
What's noticeable is the absence of university students in the scenes of acute social strife. They have grown indifferent to political and social issues. They are simply too busy, wrestling with TOEFL and TOIEC books to get higher scores to land well-paying jobs after graduation.
While collegians are busy arming themselves with English proficiency and other specs needed to get decent jobs, unionized teachers are risking their jobs to protest educational polices the government is trumpeting.
More than 17,000 members of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU) have signed an anti-government statement. Dozens of them face dismissal or suspension from their job for leading the anti-government signature campaign. After the government filed complaints with the prosecution against them, investigators raided the union headquarters to seize documents and computer servers.
The teachers' union, or ``Jeongyojo,'' celebrated its 20th birthday last month. It is the first time in its history that its headquarters has been ransacked by the prosecution. They are being accused of violating the Civil Servant Law by disobeying an order from above and defying authorities with collective action.
The union is the biggest obstacle to the Lee administration's education policies, which prioritize competition over equality. The government needs to clear this hurdle to put its polices on the right track.
The teachers have opposed almost all steps initiated by the government ― from the revival of the standardized test for primary and secondary schools to the introduction of teacher evaluation schemes. The two sides are especially poles apart over the government's plan to introduce teacher evaluation from March.
The government believes strengthening the competitiveness of public schools is essential to help reduce demand for private cram schools, or hagwon. To make schools more competitive, it believes that, along with their teachers, they should be evaluated ― and rewarded or punished ― in accordance with the assessment results.
However, teachers express concerns that the results of standardized state-administered tests will become the key yardstick for the evaluation of teachers and schools. The exams will end up ranking not only schools but teachers as well.
To avoid disadvantages or demotion, each teacher will have to put a greater focus on raising students' test scores. Under these competition-oriented programs, students will be trained to be good at taking tests.
No one would dispute that schools and teachers must be more competitive to compete with international rivals. However, what's worrisome is that the government's idea of competitiveness is meant to raise students' average scores in exams.
Instead of forcing students to take more tests under a tight curriculum, schools should give them greater opportunities to read novels, play sports, do extracurricular activities and develop their own points of views for themselves and the world.
Our society needs not only academically-outstanding students but also youngsters who are foolhardy or bold enough to occasionally sacrifice their own interests or challenge convention for a greater cause.
It will become harder to witness collegians engaged in demonstration in the future. They are distancing themselves from engagement in social issues. They are obviously turning more individualistic.
It's unavoidable but undesirable. That doesn't necessarily mean they should disagree with everything that comes from the government. But their indifference and public acceptance of bad governance could undermine democracy.