Ladies and gentlemen, as a student of a Korean school, I clearly understand the education level and the academic progress of the Korean school system and here to talk about the Korean education philosophy and its problems. Let’s first briefly discuss about the history. In 1980, the Korean Ministry of Education implemented several resolutions to make the education fairer and to increase the level of education in Korea for the population of students as a whole. The result was incredible. The rate of high school graduates accepted into colleges and universities in 1980 increased to 1989 rapidly. Approximately, just in the period of nine years, from 403,000 students increased to more than 1.4 million students! The practical education system the Ministry of Education had come up with was to increase the number of "memorization subjects".
This method forced students from Middle School grades to High School grades to mostly memories every single bit of information in the textbook and have mid-term and final-term tests each for 2 separate semesters. Students today mostly spends their time at school and home studying until midnight everyday to revise, memorize, revise, memorize and repeat everyday of their student lives just for the sake of being accepted into exceptional universities or colleges such as the well known S.K.Y. This is an issue in Korean society as well. Big companies such as HYUNDAI, SAMSUNG, LG and others will literally ignore any students who didn't graduate from S.K.Y. This urges students to be more competitive and to study (memories) every night for tests. The technique of how every single Korean teacher educate is also a big matter in this issue. The atmosphere of education is mostly based on the teacher and not the students. The teacher spends all the time in front of the black-board in class just reading the textbook and only emphasizing some important factors which all the students are capable to do which as well takes away the interest of class and number of students to positively participate in class. This also explains why most parents prefer their children studying aboard today. This is the limit of Korea's modern education. This method of memorization has also increased the stress of students. According to the New Economic Foundation (NEF), the happy planet index of South Korea in 1970 to 1979 until the Jung-Hui Park, former president of South Korea put Korea's economy level a step higher, the happy planet index decreased dramatically from the years before due to probably new laws and changes in the economy of South Korea. Than when the new education system hit the face of the Korean students, the happy planet index decreased once more due to probably too much work that students must do. By 1980, only 41% of South Korea was happy with their lives. The population of South Korea than was approximately 48,000,000, so in total, only 19,680,000 were happy with their lives. The puzzle matches. The solution that has been made in 1980 has increased higher education, but has also increased the stress of all students and reduced the happy planet index of South Korea. Personally, I strongly believe students should be able to share their ideas with teachers, fellow students and friends to develop their self-thinking abilities and expand the size of their knowledge.
The Jewish students are known to be one of the most intelligent religious students in the world. There are libraries all around the world specifically built only for the Jewish community where they share, argue and develop their ideas and thoughts with any other Jewish person in the library. Fights occur sometimes due to too much arguing. Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and many other intelligent people were Jewish. I believe the Korean Ministry of Education should adopt this kind of method and apply it to every school in Korea. The president of the U.S.A, Barrack Obama is known to deeply respect the Korean Education system and made 5 speeches around renowned universities and colleges around the U.S about it. He has said that "That's no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy." about the U.S's education system compared to the Korean education system. He is mistaken. This form of education should be corrected immediately and will just limit the students' abilities to be one step far ahead of students they will encounter who comes from more economically developed countries (MEDC)s in this mad economy of the 21st-century. All of us, the members of Korean society needs to be aware of the serious situation of Korean education system and encourage the Korean government and the Korean Ministry of Education to actually offer the students a decent and practical education that will help students to develop themselves, not only being trained by teachers and others. This concludes my speech, thank you.
Kwan Soo Lee Class25
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