There are two extreme views on tutoring that the annual market size exceeds 13 trillion won. One of them is blind faith in extracurricular lessons. They are convinced that they will improve their grades if they take extracurricular lessons, and on the contrary, they will not be able to study well if they do not take extracurricular lessons.
Such trust is causing excessive burden of private education costs and dividing Korean society into pieces. Poor families think, "Our children can't study because they don't have enough money to study after school." The middle-class parents blame themselves, saying, "It is difficult for our children to enter prestigious universities because of the high-priced extracurricular classes." Since the amount of expensive extracurricular classes varies widely, even rich families may feel deprived and lost due to the disparity in economic power gap. Except for the very few who have only money, everyone has no choice but to complain.
Such sentiments are actually vague and uncertain. Generally speaking, it feels or recognizes it, but it has never been scientifically verified. There is no data yet to prove the power of students who cannot study expensive extracurriculars to study at once, and how wide the gap in scores is due to competition among top-ranked students.
However, the obvious fact is that it is very difficult for poor children to go to prestigious universities. Nevertheless, raising voices when some people decide to enter prestigious universities in order of money is an excessive leap and malicious incitement. Of course, it has to do with economic power, but according to a college admissions official, the rate of children of professionals and teachers who are not rich is high. If they had entered prestigious universities in the order of money, they would have made a big fuss a long time ago. Unfortunately, however, the reality is that the problem of hereditary poverty and inequality is inevitable.
In order to take extracurricular classes, one must first take out blind faith in them. In this regard, I would like to propose a detailed government-level investigation into the effectiveness of extracurricular education. It is time for the education policy, which has no trace of human resource development and is focused on preventing extracurricular activities, to be based on scientific research.
The second extreme view is the instinctive rejection of extracurricular lessons. When they talk about extracurricular lessons, they have allergic reactions. This phenomenon has recently changed to a strange direction in which any education policy can be accepted as long as extracurricular classes are no longer available. The government's use of public broadcasters to provide private tutoring has become a reality, and even if teachers turn into "channel guides" who broadcast private tutoring programs, schools will roll around without any problems.
Parents with children in elementary school are sending their children to school without knowing whether they can study after the education authorities lost their report cards because they wanted to reduce extracurricular lessons. The decline in academic ability in middle and high schools has also been fixed. It is said that the "best students" in each school, whether in Gangbuk or Gangnam, Seoul, are no longer seen as natural monuments. It turned into an acorn competition among similar students.
It is not right for some forces to use such widespread emotions to achieve their political goals. Some argue that Seoul National University should be eliminated and private universities should be leveled to eliminate extracurricular classes. It is an attempt to expand its position by taking advantage of the public's fatigue caused by the harmful effects of long-term extracurricular lessons. If you do it this way, the time may come when middle and high schools will lose their exams and report cards, and enter universities by lottery like Lotto.
Korea is a representative country that has grown through education. Competition was inevitable in the process. Side effects such as overheated tutoring and inequality of opportunity for the socially disadvantaged were also inevitable. Nevertheless, there is no sector that serves as a channel for hierarchical mobility as education.
Education cannot be a hope if egalitarianism intervenes too much in turn be a hope. The extreme perception of education will lead to a nation that gives up education, which used to be the driving force of the nation, and degenerates into a nation that is foolish to level down. It is imperative to face up to the essence of education, which has to acknowledge the difference in individual abilities, and to create a spark of education that is disappearing.
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon
(Picture from Unsplash)
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