Educational Policy of South Korea - Term Paper Example

• What is the role and function of education in Korea?
• How is the high school phase of the Korean education system currently viewed by teachers, students, and parents?
• What coping strategies do schools, students and parents outline for dealing with the impact of the highly competitive ethos of Korean education?
• Background and the research problem

Nothing has held as much value or enjoyed such longevity as education. Education in Latin is ducane, which means “leading out.” In terms of time, education has three stages: the past, the present, and the future. Education is a human activity that focuses on the potential to develop a person and to “lead the person out” to a current value. Education has various aims that are general to all countries and individuals. These objectives may be individual or social.

The Korean educational system is now in crisis. Unfortunately, the government’s educational reforms offer no hope. Instead, students are alienated from their schools, while teachers lose their pride and happiness in teaching or are the target of reform from a low-ranking government employee. In addition, parents, who harbor great anxiety about their children’s happiness, are worried and confused, due to communications gaps and their own poor schooling. Enormous private education expenses also threaten them. Worst of all, poor students and their parents, who should receive support from their country and society, are now being devastated by an increasingly unfair educational structure.

It is proposed that education is a motivator of national development in eras of high economic growth since 1950, just after the Korean War. Yet, in this period, it has taken a back seat to short-term needs in investment priorities and has failed to receive support. Educational reform does not only entail designing a reform plan but also providing administrative/financial help and the government’s active interest and investment to support it.

The crisis of Korea’s public education system may lead to its collapse. The cause of such a collapse would be the lost credibility of education suppliers in the education market.

Education in Korea Historically, both large and small Korean educational reforms have been already implemented. Korea is not alone in undertaking educational reform; many countries are reforming their educational systems. Educational reforms targeting the 2000s began in the early 1980s, and advanced countries tended to put a top priority on it (Korea Counsil of College Education 2005). Sin (2007) says, “When discussing the miracle of the Korean economy, both sides of economists agree that education is the most important motivator of Korean economy growth.” (p 7). According to him, scientific writing and parents’ great zeal for children’s education gave the people the world’s lowest illiteracy rate and high mathematical ability, leading to the strongest competitive advantage in a labour-intensive industry, or element-led economy.

Moreover, on average, a long-term, subject-based teaching strategy created labourers in the heavy chemical industry, or investment-led economy, after the mid-1970s. However, although Sim (2009) admits Sin’s opinion, he has identified negative side effects of today’s extremely competitive education model. Sim (209) asks, Can children who practice to expect and answer coming test questions have creativity and imagination? Knowledge that has been simply implanted in their minds is not competitive in an era of daily excessive information.

The thought and creativity necessary to select and manage knowledge and information are learned through a process of cooperation and discussion that is hard to accomplish through the current cramming style of education. The current system of Korean education has systematically eliminated elementary, middle, and high school students’ creativity and imagination for 12 years.”(p 7) Therefore, it is imperative that we rapidly and fundamentally reform the current competitive education system to strengthen our society and compete in a global economy.

Korean education should be developed and considered along with other political issues. With regard to education history, John Dewey, one of the representative figures of contemporary educational theory, largely emphasised education’s influence in society and culture by saying education enables an individual to participate in the social context of people. Through education, people intend to or consistently strive to deliver or acquire knowledge, attitudes, technologies, or sensibilities. He also stated that education could be achieved by these efforts.

Education means changes in life: changes from the undesirable to the desirable. Two explanations can be described these changes as, Firstly, education is emphasised as a purposeful, organised, and consistent activity. Many people see there are always purposeful factors in education. These individuals argue that all experiences are educational. However, this is not true. Some experiences are never educational. Secondly, many people target holistic educational activities to improve their knowledge, attitudes, values, and technologies.

Education should deliver knowledge and influence people. Education should establish in people the right values and attitudes about life. We can impart the right aspects of life to others through education. However, what is the situation in Korea these days? In terms of passion for education, no country can compete with Korea, where parents spend more money on their children’s private education than their incomes, by choosing emigration and becoming kirogi (goose) families. Recently, even though the government and relevant organisations have certainly recognised that there are problems (although they have recognised them far longer before) and changed the educational system, there has been, in actuality, no change at all.

Now, children of the wealthy study in better environments, attend more academies, and enter domestic or foreign universities, while poor students are pessimistic and despondent about their situations. In Korea, famous proverb states that, “education is a great plan of 100 years.