First year high school students have become so outspoken in their displeasure with the "high school achievement ranking system" that they are organizing a candlelight protest. Education officials are scared and unsure of what to do, and have issued an official recommendation that they not participate any such protest.
There must be no unreasonable attempt to prevent students from participating in a public assembly. One has to assume that by high school, young people have the ability to judge things for themselves. Trying to block them from expressing their views would also be undesirable from an educational perspective. We would, however, hope to see students make sure they are not taking collective action because of momentary rage.
One certainly does understand these students, because they are forced to compete with friends in the same class and as first year high school students have to take tests far harder than they did in middle school. Anyone who was educated in Korea knows of how horrific "entrance test hell" really is. Universities will have to disclose the framework of their student selection procedures in as soon as possible in order to lessen the burden they have to face. There are high schools that are trying to find ways to lessen the burden that test have become.
However, the long-term goal of normalizing public education must not waver because of the immediate confusion. The new university entrance system and its emphasis on high school performance is not the best there can be, but it is clearly going in the right direction given the goal of normalizing school education. The problem is that college preparation has been led by the private tutoring market, and bringing it into the framework of public education will not be as easy as hoped for because the system is not ready. The government deserves the criticism that it has neglected the need to invest in public education, increase the number of teachers, and improve teacher quality.
There are aspects of what students are saying that are worthy of consideration, such as their criticism of the inhumanity of relative evaluation. It is a big problem that they have to trample over their classmates in order to get ahead or face falling behind. Over the long run returning to absolute evaluation and giving teachers more authority in evaluating students is the right approach. It should, however, be remembered that the reason relative evaluation was adopted was because of criticism that absolute evaluation led to artificial inflation of evaluation results and made it hard to differentiate between the performance of different students.
Some say that ever since the scholastic aptitude test ended up being taken essentially 12 times in 3 years schools have become war zones – never mind the "normalization of public education." However, one has to remind oneself that until recently there was heavy criticism of an education structure where a single aptitude test determined the rest of one's life. Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that students take class more seriously than they used to, and there are positive changes such as more reading and class debate.
Irresponsible criticism only incites confusion. The greatest victims of that are the young people who will support our society in the future. Everyone will have to lend their support to the effort of minimizing the negative side effects of the new system, but the basic goal of normalizing public education must not be taken away from.
The Hankyoreh, 5 May 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] 'Normalize' Public Education Despite Difficulties |
