Pull the Fire Alarm

By John M. Rodgers

There is a Korean saying that goes something like, ``Don't burn down the house to get rid of the bedbugs.''

This came to mind as the recent opprobrium regarding foreign language high schools has reached a heated pitch, and led me to ruminate over the part I have played in the supposedly sinful and satanic state of affairs.

For, according to some lawmakers, including Chung Doo-un of the governing Grand National Party, my school, along with other foreign language schools, is at the crux of the educational problem in Korea.

Over the past few months news has centered on the achievements of these schools and how their graduates are doing well in the world.

Recent research by the JoongAng Ilbo showed that a high number of individuals from such school are in the field of law and statistics showed that Daewon Foreign Language High School had the highest percentage of high scorers on the 2009 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).

It is certainly no coincidence that high acclaims have helped reinforce renewed assaults.

Nothing of this is new to those who have been in education and know well of the constant cry of ``egalitarianism'' and the equalization policies that took place during the past administration's time in office.

Yet, now, a bold viciousness lies within the words of lawmakers and the like with little logic to mix with the pathos.

The critics throw words like ``failure'' and ``witches'' around with ease and artfulness, claiming that hagwon (private learning institutes) proliferation is a direct effect of the desire to enter such schools and that measures must be taken to rectify the wrongs perpetrated by these institutions.

First, is the call to make such schools less autonomous which basically means stripping them of the right to select the brightest students. (Something along these lines was done when these schools were no longer permitted to accept students nationally but only from within Seoul.)

Second, the main opposition Democratic Party is calling for the heads and houses of these nefarious nullifiers of equality in education; simply, they say, the schools should be eradicated.

Nonetheless, no one is addressing the larger problems of faltering public school education, the weight that one test ― the CSAT ― holds in determining college entrance and the maniacal obsession parents have with getting their children into the best colleges.

I cannot claim to know everything that the current lawmakers hold in their claims but I presume they think getting rid of elite schools will improve public education under some premise that the best students will be spread far and wide with students of many calibers mixing and sharing in an egalitarian renaissance.

In addition, it would seem that they are asserting that once these schools are crippled or ``gone,'' private education will dive or disappear with them. None of this holds water given the aforementioned facts.

What their proposals do end up doing is an extremely detrimental thing: removing institutions where the best students can compete with the best students thereby sending the most capable and well prepared individuals on to university where they can prepare to make a difference in helping Korea and the world move forward.

This would also send parents, inevitably, on a new search to find out how to put their child into such an environment ― perhaps at a high-level hagwon, with private tutors or abroad ― so they can enter the same universities, propagating the myth that life is fair and everyone deserves to be the best.

Instead these critics should be thinking about how to improve education in public schools with teacher training, evaluations and merit-based promotions while giving more freedom to colleges (something that is now slowly being allowed) in their admissions which thereby reduces the CSAT's weight, and encouraging more engaging and morally centered curricula across the nation.

Moreover, they should study what these schools they so despise are doing right: requiring volunteer work, promoting leadership education, exploring cultures through foreign languages, employing technology in the classroom and, albeit slowly, offering future career exploration for young people who are often lost or blindly driven toward someone else's dreams.

Already the principals of these schools have announced alterations to admissions policies like abolishing English listening tests, setting quotas for students from lower income families and using admissions officers to conduct interviews.

Surely working together toward compromise, creation and the overall improvement of Korea's education system is better than calling for the incineration of august academic institutions in order to exterminate some adverse elements that could be otherwise mitigated.

The writer is the head English teacher at Daewon Foreign Language High School in Seoul. He can be reached at jmrseoul@hotmail.com. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times.