[INTERVIEW] 'In climate crisis, city kids need a second hometown'

Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon talks about his live-and-study-countryside program for Seoul students during an interview with The Korea Times. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

Seoul education chief wants students to go to countryside, gain global worldview

By Ko Dong-hwan

Wrapping up his interview with The Korea Times on Tuesday, Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon asked the reporter a favor: he wanted his story published full-page with lots of pictures showing Seoul kids enjoying their time in rural villages of Jeolla provinces with new teachers, friends and neighborhoods that are naturally well-preserved. Cho has high hopes. Having introduced a live-and-study-countryside program for elementary and middle school students in Seoul two years ago, he wants it promoted not just within the country but also outside Korea.

Cho launched the program ― his brainchild ― in 2021 under a partnership with the Jeollanamdo Office of Education in South Jeolla Province. After a year, he expanded the program by signing an additional partnership with North Jeolla Province's education office. With the programs having proven popular, not only among students, but also with their parents, the superintendent is now in talks with education authorities in Gangwon and North Gyeongsang provinces to expand the six month-to-one-year program further.

"We are thinking of introducing some new themes to this program," Cho said. "Like a program for kids with atopic sensitivities to make them breathe cleaner air outside the city and possibly heal the allergy. Another program can attract students interested in taekwondo and send them to Muju County in North Jeolla Province, where the martial art is deep-rooted, and earn a first-dan black belt by the end of their stay there. In Namwon in North Jeolla Province, they can also learn gugak (traditional Korean music) in this city well-known for that field."

Cho believes the program is what students in the Korean capital need especially under the ever-increasing threat of climate crisis. By living close to nature, he believes the students will learn the importance of conservation and the urgency to prevent manmade problems from further intensifying the risks of natural disasters.

Students from Cheontae Elementary School in Hwasun County, South Jeolla Province, learn about insects during an outdoor activity in September 2021. The school had 16 students from Seoul enrolled for the second semester of 2022, 13 of whom extended their stay from six months to a year. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

"Among those in their 60s and older who were born outside cities and moved to cities to get jobs, a rising number of people have recently retired and are moving back to the countryside," Cho said. "I guess it reflects a providence of human life that people seek a natural environment to start their last chapters. So maybe kids in cities these days also need a second hometown in the countryside to return to later."

The superintendent believes the program can also solve the country's chronic population imbalance between cities and countryside areas. While Seoul and its surrounding regions are becoming more crowded, countryside regions nationwide are facing the opposite fate with diminishing populations. By sending Seoul kids and their families to various countryside regions, their satisfaction in the program and willingness to stay there longer will hopefully lead to more urban families moving out of cities and resettling in rural regions, according to Cho. Earlier this month, a Japanese delegation from the education office in Tokyo, a city which has faced the same problem, visited Cho's office to discuss the matter.

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"We need a new model to show how urban and rural communities can coexist," Cho said.

The program, under which Seoul students move to a countryside school with a total student body of less than 60 children, started with 81 students in the first semester in March of 2021. As of the second semester this year, the figure has jumped to 263. Over 70 percent of the students extended their countryside stay from six months to a year, and 20 percent of the students decided to stay for longer than one year ― the cutoff point for a 600,000 won ($420) per month subsidy from the education offices of Seoul and Jeolla.

Two Cheontae Elementary School students from Seoul stroll along a paddy field in September 2021. Students from Seoul can either move to the region together with their family or come alone and join a local homestay-type program. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

"A mother from Seongdong District in Seoul who moved to Jeolla started recording online how she traveled around the countryside to discover local eateries," said Cho, who was born in the rural city of Jeongeup in North Jeolla Province and later moved to bigger cities ― Jeonju and Seoul. "Some urban families make the commitment to experience rural life for even a month. Wouldn't it be fun to do it for six months or longer?"

Going 'glocal' through online discussion

Another program that Cho introduced earlier this year is called International Common Lesson, in which students engage in an online discussion with their counterparts from different countries. Like the live-and-study-countryside program, the lessons offer students a chance to experience places and people they are totally unfamiliar with and eventually learn to break out of their old, isolated perspectives.

Since last March, the program has been joined by 190 elementary to high schools with roughly half in Seoul and the other half in Japan, India, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and the United States. Participating students can communicate via a real-time interpretation tool or a common language, like English. And what do the children talk about? Cho says that nowadays there are many common agendas and they can share ideas about things like the climate crisis, COVID-19 and even BTS.

The live-and-study-countryside program allows Seoul students to get familiar with the environment and learn reasons why they should preserve nature. Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

"I am a believer of cosmopolitan democracy, because I think people should be able to sympathize with those beyond their own nationals across borders," he said. "It's one of the pillars of my office, to educate students as global citizens. There were times when we had to travel overseas to talk about what's global. Now, not just Seoul but Toronto, New York and Washington can also be considered local. This is 'glocal.'"

Learning to understand from other people's points of view, according to Cho, is especially required among urban students in Korea. He said that Koreans may have accomplished democratization and industrial development in a short span, but that doesn't mean they have "grown up on the inside."

"There are schools in Gangnam District that have been around for 40 years or longer and we tried to renovate them, but parents of students in those schools protest the idea because they don't want their children to suffer from construction noises," said Cho. "We have become too sensitive and protective of our personal rights and interests. Our students should learn not to become egocentric, but rather understand problems at a community level."