Korea’s substandard education system leaves many children behind

If all it takes is a whole, whole lot of enthusiasm, bags of money, a sense of fair play and not even one kid being left behind, then the Koreans should have this whole education thing licked.

Why is it, then, that their system is such an embarrassing mess? And not just a mess, but an “ignominious” mess, to quote the English-language Korea Herald, a “tragedy of epic proportions,” in the words of Korean writer Rhie Won-bok, a failure that heaps one more unwelcome misery onto a society that, frankly, has enough on its mind already?

To answer this, I invite you first to take a look around the neighborhood where my fianc?e, Kate, and I live and teach. You’ll see dozens of schools. Besides the public schools, there are privately run academies on nearly every block. Parents ship their children off to these hogwans at the end of a full day of classes for additional instruction in everything from English and math to art, music and martial arts.

Across from the park is a colorful piece of architecture called the American Language School. This is where Kate and I are employed. Inside slumps Mr. Hur, the school’s director. Anxiously pinched between his fingers is a cigarette, its curling smoke sending off distress flares. He’s been a suit at Hyundai and written a textbook on management, but these days his hogwan’s numbers are beginning to dip. And what he hopes to be an isolated downturn is beginning to look more like a trend.

For Mr. Hur, a former army officer, this used to be the front lines of the so-called “education miracle.” Now it’s the front lines of the education disaster.

A little history: At the supermarket in our neighborhood you can buy soda called 815. That’s because on Aug. 15, 1945, the Japanese surrendered their brutal, 40-year claim to the Korean peninsula. For Koreans, the world changed absolutely on 8/15. Until then, only 20 percent of the population received any formal education. Today, 75 percent graduate from high school and another 35 percent go to college.

Much of this “miracle” was fueled by equally miraculous economic growth, which created a demand for an educated work force. In the 1980s, the government enrolled nearly double the number of students at its national universities. The education industry promptly exploded – and with that came cutthroat competition.

It’s no accident Koreans turned their country around so quickly. They thrive on competition. They’re obsessed with keeping up with their neighbors. If one mother sends her kids to hogwan, soon all the mothers are doing it. Between yawns, my students report attending up to seven hogwans during the week.

This doesn’t come cheap, either. Ten years ago, the government discovered that the fees parents were shelling out nearly equaled the entire education budget. Like the cautious friend of an addict, the government attempted an “intervention” by regulating the rates hogwans can charge. Koreans still spent more than $4.5 billion on extracurricular fees in the year 2000. Now the government is allowing public schools to offer some after-hours tutoring. It’s a development that has Mr. Hur threatening to tie on the traditional red headband and demonstrate in Seoul.

But the truth is, for the all the damage they incur – debt-ridden parents, frazzled students, exploited teachers – hogwans are only a symptom of the system’s real problem: the college-entrance exam. The students who beat Mr. Hur to the streets in November gave notice that if no one else understood this fact, they did.

Their protest followed reports that one of the annual, standardized test’s questions had two correct answers. So what, you say? The Korea Herald calls the test “nothing less than a matter of life or death to many students.” Its results determine whether and where they will be able to attend college in Korea and it is not uncommon for kids who score poorly to commit suicide.

Even small problems with the test, then, have huge consequences. For this reason, the government travels far out of its way to make it fair. That’s the upside. The downside is that an entire educational system is geared toward one test. “What students learn from elementary school through high school would fit only one CD-ROM,” Rhie claims, going on to lament the continuing reliance on rote learning.

In an ambitious effort to make their system accountable and fair, Koreans have managed instead to discourage creativity in their students. And they’ve hurt their competitiveness abroad, where, in the Information Age, creatively assembling and utilizing information – not memorizing it – is the most valued skill.

Evidence of all this can be found in the particularly poor performance put on by Korean college students. On the one hand, they’re too tired from years of school and hogwans to study properly. On the other, they haven’t been taught to think. Facts are rarely analyzed. Questioning your teacher, even in college, is considered insulting.

Back in our neighborhood, Mr. Hur hasn’t given up on his hogwan, but lately he’s been inviting friends into his office to look at the latest line of Amway products. As he sucks on his tiny cigarette, perhaps he understands what a cautionary tale the Korean system has become: Unlimited money and a fair test have guaranteed that no Korean child is left behind another Korean child. Instead, they’re left behind the rest of the world.

Brendan Wolfe is a former editor of Maine Times.