You are now watching a rerun of the brinkmanship previously seen between the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development and Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union (KTU, or Jeon Gyo Jo) over a proposed teacher evaluation program. The government wants it made law within the end of the year, while the teachers’ union is taking to the streets against it. It has gotten to the point where there was a physical clash at public hearing on the matter the other day, after which the government arrested three union officials. The union, for its part, has decided to turn up the volume with a campaign that involves having local organization heads take half-day leaves from their jobs in education in order to join the struggle, and also using the tactic of coordinating their vacations to take place simultaneously.
It reminds you of the game of chicken being played between North Korea and the United States. It is truly pathetic to see parties directly involved in education behave in a manner that goes against everything education is supposed to be about. The government is bulldozing ahead with plans to have the program part of the law by the end of the year, to expand the program next year, and implement it in full the year after. This most recent public hearing was just a formality, required ahead of any change in the law. The union already prevented these changes one time around, in 2004. This year it obstructed a public hearing related to the implementation of a proposed "education by ability level" program. Not one of the pending issues under the current government, beginning with the failed attempt to hold a public hearing on the question of making changes to national university operation, has been resolved in a pro-education manner. Programs get pushed along in an obstinate fashion, only to get blocked in an equally obstinate way.
Classroom education requires, more than anything else, understanding about you, me, and everyone. It is supposed to teach about thinking from the perspective of others, about understanding and tolerance, compromise and reconciliation. What you see right now, however, is two parties behaving in a way that seeks to resolve problems through physical strength, much like you might expect to see in the wild. It is the students who suffer the consequences when these groups collide. One of the ways they suffer is when classes aren’t held, but the fact students are being taught the wrong kind of values and a twisted view of the world is even scarier.
The education community owes it to the country to provide alternatives if its members cannot come up with the best plan possible. The education ministry is not right to maintain the current evaluation system and then add onto that an "educational capacity" appraisal program. It is hard enough that teachers have to work so hard to keep from offending school administrators; now they’ll have to please students and parents as well. The union’s approach is to solve all the existing issues at once with a program for the appointment of headmasters, an unrealistic plan, as well.
The union’s evasion of the evaluation program it is so uncomfortable with - while at the same time demanding something that would lead to civil war within the community - is just not persuasive. The rest of the country, meanwhile, remembers how a compromise proposal calling for the open hiring of headmasters fell apart because it was attacked from both sides.
Issues relating to education need to be resolved in a manner that values education. We call on all who are directly involved in the process to change their ways.
[Editorial] Anti-educational behavior |
