Abolishing Autonomous High Schools

By Andrew Kang

In November, the Ministry of Education announced a step-by-step roadmap toward eliminating elite high school education by around 2020. With the school I attend being a primary target, I find myself defined as the “privileged” class.

During my youth, I received a relatively higher-quality education thanks to my family, teachers and society. And in the schools I managed to enter, my teachers often focused their lessons on gratitude and modesty, teaching that all of this must be paid back.

Now, all of that is lost. The middle school I graduated from faced scrutiny, and a year later it was “simplified”; along with others, its admission process is now random. Unfortunately, similar omens loom over private high schools like mine.

These schools’ students, teachers, and parents now speak out to prevent their demotion, but the general public sees it as greed. Of course, students like their schools, teachers like their jobs, the richer class like their power. Emotion hazes logic in this debate ― the government calls these schools “deep-rooted evils,” and the public has come to believe it.

Ironically, few can fathom an end to this witch hunt. When the current government fully implements its planned education policies, all high schools will be put on the Procrustean bed, for an “egalitarian” ground in the extreme competition for matriculation. Some believe prestigious universities are next. More than ever, this logic seems to permit the sabotage of what has fueled Korea’s progress.

The origins of this frenzy toward selective education are also mysterious. My observations point to external instigations as the initial cause for this policy of “bringing down the elite.” For example, the rage of Korean people is vociferous: since 2015, the GDP growth rate has hovered around 3 percent; six months ago, President Park was impeached for relying on a shaman crook; the Moon administration’s policies have spurred even more controversy. Increasingly, Koreans seem dubious of politics and communal sympathy. Perhaps, dissatisfaction with overall politics and any privilege for others has morphed into obsession for change, even in education.

In fact, this wave goes beyond politics. We now live in an era of the self-interested, suspicious individual. Only 60 years ago, Korean was a newly independent ethnicity that had endured decades of foreign rule and the terrors of war. The Saemaul Movement, the 4.19 Revolution, the June Democracy Movement, the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the 2002 World Cup all embodied and evinced the Korean spirit of community. Now, this brotherhood seems forgotten. Possibly, the rigors of the modern era have segregated our unified emotions.

Thus emerge the truly inherent flaws of Korean education: even at adulthood, not only are we prone to the instigations of politicians, but we forget that a benefit to one is a benefit to all, and that we are inseparable fellow members of the Republic. Had we been cognizant and rational human beings (the products of ideal education), this debate would not have stirred our nation.

The decision Koreans arrive at will determine the future of the nation. This crisis is a test of Koreans’ integrity, of whether we can retain our forebears’ values ― diversity and freedom ― in the building formula of our nation.

Andrew Kang is a junior at the Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies.