By Phillip Hartman
South Korea’s educational system is in need of repair. Public schools are woefully inadequate, so the burden has been laid on parents, tutors and private academies to pick up the slack.
The problem is, this is a terribly inefficient way to educate a student. It’s redundant, time-consuming and sometimes contradictory. But while politicians and the Ministry of Education (MOE) sit on their hands and do nothing about the problem, children are suffering. They are the ones who must endure the redundancy and it takes a toll on their health.
Public education is broken. It has been destroyed by rigid, self-interested school administrations on the one end and by stingy governments on the other. Teachers and principals seem more concerned with securing their own benefits and job security than with providing children with the best education possible. There are many bad teachers at public schools but instead of being fired, their short-comings are often ignored. How many schools have teachers still administering corporal punishment with nothing being done?
Meanwhile, the government only exacerbates the problem by embarking on cure-all programs, such as expanding after-school programs, but then doesn’t provide enough funding to properly implement them.
One notable example is the various programs that provide native English teachers to schools. Only enough funding was provided to hire one teacher per school, meaning students only had a native teacher once or twice a week. Compare that with a private academy where students see a native teacher for two hours every day and it was inevitable that the public school program wouldn’t produce the same kind of results.
These gimmicky programs the education ministry implements are only directed at appeasing voters and do nothing to fix schools or educate children. These schools may dream of out-completing private academies, but lack even basic resources like toilet paper.
It’s clear that out of the two concurrent educational systems in South Korea, one is working and one isn’t. While it may be good for equality to have a premium school system that all can attend, as long as taxpayers refuse to pay for it, it’s only a dream.
Meanwhile, many of our children are being educated properly at private academies around the country. But these poor children must attend school all day long. First of all, they attend their inadequate public schools and then march off to get their real education at private academies. Why do we make these children study the same things twice? Why not just admit that these children are wasting their time by attending public school?
It is unfortunate that there is an educational gap between those who attend private academies and those that don’t. But the decision has already been made to have an unequal educational system. Those that drag out this political battle while using the children as bargaining chips are acting selfishly by putting their own interests ahead of this generation of students.
Right now, public schools are trying to do too much and succeeding at nothing. Instead of teaching every subject poorly, why not focus on a few core subjects and leave the others to private academies. English education would be a good place to start. Right now public schools are failing miserably at teaching students English. Mostly because they think all they have to do is place a native teacher in a classroom and the students will magically learn English.
Schools should return to the basics of education: reading, writing, math and science. They should strive to become the best educators of these subjects, recruiting top talent and poaching curriculum ideas from highly successful European schools. School hours could be reduced to make attending private academies easier on children. With this extra time children may get a chance to sleep more and eat healthier meals.
The controversial school lunch program launched this year strove to turn back the tide on rising obesity in school children. But what the school board ignored was how the busy schedules of these students reduced physical activity time and made snacking a necessity.
If the MOE really cared about the health and education of students, it would seek a way to reduce the number of hours a student sits at a public school desk, not a private one. In the grand scheme of things, a public school that tries to be everything to everyone becomes nothing to no one.
By focusing on core subjects, public schools give themselves a chance to improve their reputation and, perhaps, in the long-run, become the school system that they desperately desire to be.
Phillip Hartman is a private academy teacher from Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. He has lived and worked in South Korea since 2006. He is a permanent resident of South Korea and a citizen of Canada.