The early English education craze among parents of kindergarten and elementary school students is a well known phenomenon. In middle class neighborhoods like Seoul's Gangnam and Mok-dong, kindergartens where children sing in, play in, and study English have long been popular. Classes cost between 500,000 and 1 million won (500-1000 USD) a month.
Elementary students increasingly have to face "English proficiency exams" of strange and unknown origin. However, it is still surprising to learn that 74 percent of first and second grade elementary students are or at one point have received private English lessons outside the classroom, and that 87 percent of kindergarten parents say their children are taught English at kindergarten. With the exception of children from poor families, essentially all children are receiving private English lessons.
Currently, English instruction in public school begins in the third grade, at the earliest. There is a debate within the education community regarding the plan to officially have English taught at the first and second grade levels beginning in 2008. While the plan is not without basis, it does not explain the current popularity of English kindergartens and why babies still on their mothers' milk are given private lessons. Some observers blame the atmosphere in Korean society in encouraging this craziness. Big business leaders demand the production of talented future employees who are armed with fluent English, saying they are necessary if the country is going to get ahead in global competition. In response, the government created a number of high schools specializing in foreign languages. These schools have since become the country's prestigious high schools for preparing for university entrance exams, and have forced young people to compete in the subject of English. However, you cannot blame only the social climate, for if you fail to adjust to the demands of high school and university entrance examinations and the tests given to applicants by big companies, all of which require a knowledge of English, you will fall behind.
What is important, therefore, is the development of a program through which English is taught effectively and properly, one that is accessible to all students. Unless that happens, having elementary students start studying English in the classroom at the first and second grade will not mean anything. The country cannot continue to neglect the haphazard quality of early English education in public schools, because it is highly probable that, in the long run, this will hurt the creative and cognitive abilities of our children.
There must be no further delay in the development and implementation of an English education program that is effective for the age group in question. The example of Finland, where children gain a high level of English competitiveness entirely through formal classroom education, would be an example worth emulating; Finnish and Korean even share a similar grammatical structure. Civil society needs to participate in the process of developing such a program, not just education officials and experts, because parental confidence is of utmost importance.
Program needed for early English education |
