Hagwon for Everything

By Mathias Specht

According to a recent article in the Korea Herald, Korea now has ``hagwons," or cram schools, showing doctors tricks of the trade to get ahead of their competitors, young men anxious before their mandatory military service how to clean rooms and aspiring flight attendants the finer points of serving drinks. There is even a school that prepares students for their first blind date. No matter how wacky such businesses might seem to most Westerners, many of them flourish, showing just how important Koreans think supplementary education is.

In fact, the size of the market for private tutoring in Korea is breathtaking and according to the Bank of Korea, a staggering $1.64 billion was spent in 2008 alone. Although the most prominent ones focus on English, there are hagwons for just about every school subject. Whether math, science or languages, to reach the top, extracurricular education is perceived as a must and the main motivation for enrollment is usually provided by the Korean college entrance exams, or College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT).

Even talented students often end up taking just as many lessons as their classmates or neighbors, simply because their mothers constantly benchmark them against their immediate surroundings. Likewise, the prevailing study philosophy of paying for a quick, ready-made explanation rather than gradually improving through trial and error has spurred the growth of the hagwon industry.

While this may work for the diffusion of factual knowledge, it seems less adequate to promote problem solving capacities, let alone creativity. Every time I pass the string of art hagwons on the way to Hongik University, I am reminded of this by the display of countless, practically identical student works. While these are predominantly made to exhibit technical ability, the degree to which they use the same style, colors, often even motives, makes it seem as if they were made by hundreds of clones from one individual mind.

Also, students often seek out hagwons in a quest for secrets that sometimes allegedly come from inside information on upcoming tests or are simply the result of analyzing previous ones. However, such ``shortcuts" simply reduce knowledge to the minimum test requirements and hereby render it not only superficial but at times outright useless in any situation other than the intended exam. The prime example is the vast number of Korean students, who after years of hagwon training, know how to crack TOEFL tests or the CSAT, but are unable to have a conversation in English.

But it is not only peer pressure and the promise of secret shortcuts that fill the classrooms of Korea's private institutes. Hagwons also seem to do a better job at educating students than public schools ― at least if exam grades alone are the measure of an education.

One reason for this is surely the increased level of competition among them. High margins and consumer demand constantly attract newcomers that keep even dominant players on the tips of their toes. To gain competitive advantages hagwons regularly hire better qualified teachers (and quickly fire the unproductive or unpopular ones ― an important difference compared to their state-run counterparts, where even scandalously abusive teachers seem to be employed for a lifetime) and update their teaching methods and materials, depending on their success at increasing test scores.

Consequently, parents invest more of their income in hagwons and students begin to prioritize the more effective extra study over regular school work. In the light of this losing battle between state and cram schools, one might wonder whether the motivation behind the government's recent decision to introduce a homegrown exam to replace the TOEFL test is indeed to tackle inefficient spending patterns or simply to reclaim some power from hagwons.

Still, the present situation in Korea seems at least partly dysfunctional. Despite the fact that students study virtually non-stop, often covering the same concepts twice, once in regular school and then again in a hagwon, there is not much evidence that this gives them an edge on an international level.

In fact, it seems more accurate to assume that the majority of Korean students eventually just master the same material that is covered in European schools and universities and end up with perfectly comparable jobs. If all the extra efforts are necessary merely to be accepted by a local college that itself is not superior to one in the West and eventually produces graduates that apparently aren't either, then maybe the problem is the way students are selected in Korea.

Equally, many Koreans are probably just as aware that the CSAT not only costs a lot of time and money, but also promotes the superficial memorization of selective, test-relevant content and is unlikely to foster the development of creative thinking. Maybe, it is just the preoccupation with competition that makes the transition to soft factors of achievement, such as a well-balanced education, a creative mind or even happiness, so hard for Koreans. And the desire to show off to one's next door neighbor or other members of society has led to an emphasis on those dimensions of life that can be measured and compared in absolute terms, such as salaries, job titles, educational backgrounds or grades.

As long as this mentality persists, it is not unlikely that Korea will remain stuck in its self-created ``hagwon-trap."

The writer is an MBA graduate of Yonsei University and founder of the Korean company Stelence International. He is currently writing a book about Korea and can be reached at mathias@stelence.com.