[Editorial] Private School Issue a Question of Policy

Leaders of private school associations in 13 cities and provinces have called an emergency meeting in which they decided to withdraw their earlier threat about refusing to accept next year's incoming students. Though late in coming, that is truly fortunate for the students and parents who were so nervous about what was going to happen.

Private schools hurt themselves quite a bit in deciding to take the "anti-educational" move of refusing to accept new students. They lost a lot of the public's confidence when they put into action their ideas about being able to treat schools and education as private property by holding students hostage as they took on the government. Headmasters in the city of Jeju even apologized to students, parents, and the community. They eventually realized that rejecting new students ultimately not a fight against the national government, it was a fight against students, parents, the community, teachers, and their consciences as educators.

We do not want to assume that the turnaround was the result of being cornered by the government's determination to investigate corruption at the organizations that own and operate private schools. We believe that it was the overwhelming opposition of those directly involved in the education process – students, parents, and teachers – and because their consciences kicked in again. It is a matter of conscience that first and foremost, education must serve the public good.

It is unfortunate that private schools as a whole have been discredited by this. But it is fortunate that people are finally seeing a difference between healthy private schools and those that are a problem. The many Catholic, Buddhist, Won Buddhist, and other schools that are run in a healthy manner made their opposition clear from the start. There were many regular private schools that also refused to participate in the "anti-educational" action.

The purpose of revising the Private School Law was to protect students from poorly run private schools, and so the authorities need to work to differentiate the good schools from the bad ones, even now that none of them continue to refuse next year's students. They need to proceed as planned and go ahead with the joint audit or investigation into corruption at the organizations that own and operate private schools.

The Hankyoreh, 9 January 2006.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]