[Editorial] Private schools do not deserve ’autonomy’

Demands by Protestant private schools that the law regulating the operation of the nation’s private schools be "re-revised" are heating up again. The leadership of the Christian Council of Korea (CCK), an umbrella organization of conservative denominations, along with individual denominations like the Presbyterian Church of Korea, are engaging in public sit-ins and head-shaving protests to call for the law to be revised again. The National Council of Churches in Korea (KNCC), which had long taken a circumspect approach to the issue, has joined in the campaign. Thus, the pressure for another revision is spreading to the whole of organized Protestantism. Their main demand is that legislators get rid of the clause that calls for the existence of an "open regulatory board," a stipulation that was added to the current law to increase transparency in the bodies overseeing the schools. KNCC’s proposal is something of a compromise, since it wants the law to allow appointments for outside board members to be made by the denominations to which school-operating non-profit foundations belong, rather than by "school operating committees" and "professors’ councils." But since there is simply no way a religious group is going to go against the wishes of a school-operating organization, the "open board" system might as well not exist in the first place.

The Protestant private schools have but one basis for their claim: that the "open board" requirement would make it impossible to accomplish the mission their institutions exist to carry out, based on their founding ideals. "Founding ideals" means nothing other than missionary activity, so their claim in fact makes no sense. The ordinances attached to the revised Private School Law allow schools to include in their bylaws stipulations about the qualifications and methods of recommendation for outside board members. That being the case, each school is free to limit assigning these qualifications to someone who is a ’believer’ of the religious organization operating the school in question. It is therefore hardly persuasive that mission activity becomes impossible, since members of the same denomination can be part of the board. It would be more straightforward if the schools just demanded to be totally unaccountable for how they run themselves.

Also, a considerable number of Protestant schools are excessive in their push to have students follow the school religion, and are therefore infringing on students’ freedom of conscience. It was so bad at one middle school that just the other day a teacher there got so frustrated with the school’s invasion of conscientious and religious freedom that the teacher went to the Seoul Board of Education and submitted a petition calling for something to be done. The teacher could easily be fired or punished harshly as a result, but this incident underscores just how difficult it must be to endure certain of these schools’ attempts to force a particular religion on their students. The situation is such that Protestant private schools indeed should have some outside regulation, in order to prevent them from using their mission statements to violate students’ freedom of conscience.

The position Korean private educational institutions occupies differs from private schools in other countries. They account for 50 percent of middle and high schools and close to 90 percent of the country’s universities. In addition, though they are called "private schools," most of them rely on the state for most of their finances - and in the case of middle and high schools, this figure is higher than 90 percent - so they are in no position to talk about their need for autonomy. After all, given their numbers, they carry much of the burden for public-funded education.

What is more pathetic than anything else in this whole affair is the behavior of the government. The ruling Uri Party, for example, hinted it might be willing to compromise on the "open board" principle, and by doing so it encouraged this recent uproar. The KNCC’s compromised proposal is, in part, one result of the government’s blundering. The ruling party needs to set a clear course about what its position is going to be, then apologize for the confusion it has caused. Protestant private schools, for their part, need to clean up their act and stop infringing on students’ rights in the name of their "founding principles." They need to put a halt to the serious corruption that frequently becomes a problem at some among them. Only then can they start to talk about autonomy.

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