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Gari Hahm | By Gari Hahm
A growing number of people are demanding the strengthening of public education to be placed on top of the national policy agenda in the next government.
Strong public schools will not only encourage students to depend less on private tutoring programs to get college admissions, but will also help parents spend less on their children''s private education.
As the presidential election is just around the corner, presidential candidates have presented their visions for a strong public education.
Their visions are focused on enhancing the quality and competitiveness of education.
As a high school student, I am not very knowledgeable of the educational policies and have no ability to objectively evaluate the education policies proposed by the candidates.
However, I would like to sincerely ask the presidential nominees to develop a world-renowned educational system so that students can learn and excel to be the best we can be.
Presidential hopefuls need to implement an educational system, which should be based on genuine educational reforms and not on temporary and superficial revisions.
So many times the people have experienced politicians introducing a temporary fix to our educational problem, but this should not be repeated in the presidential election in December.
The next president should also build an educational environment where students can cultivate and develop their abilities at school without having to go abroad to study at an early age or depend on private schools such as hagwon.''''
The president should create an educational environment and system in which students with diverse talents and abilities will have more choices on how we can enter university.
My policy suggestion is based on my personal background, which allowed me to go through the trials and errors of the Korean education system after I came to Korea to study.
I was born and educated in the United States until my first year in middle school and decided to come to Korea to attend secondary education.
Because Korea''s educational situation forces many students to go abroad for early education because they are not satisfied with the Korean education system, many people were opposed to my reverse movement to Korea.
However, I believed that I needed to learn about my own country''s language and the culture before I could achieve my dream of becoming a global leader.
Nevertheless, not surprisingly, as a middle school student in Korea, I had to go through the most difficult and troubled time of my life and muddle through the bitterness of adaptation.
Because it was not easy for me to adapt to the new environment in Korea, there were several occasions when my school''s administrators and teachers called up my parents advising them to send me back to the U.S.
Even I came to a point of regretting about my decision to come to Korea and I actually asked my parents to send me back there.
After such a difficult phase, I am proud to be a high school freshman in Korea.
However, like many other high school students in Korea I am now struggling with the death triangle,'''' because high school students must fully meet the requirements of the national scholastic achievement entrance exam, essay exam, and school grades to enter university.
As I will not be able to enter a university if I fail to satisfy any of these requirements, I have no choice but to depend on hagwon,'''' the private education institutes outside of school.
The Korean educational system, which prioritizes private education more than public education, and which focuses more on the merits of the entrance examination than on giving more importance to humanities-oriented learning is very disappointing and is not what I imagined.
I am very sorry to see my parents struggling with their finances because of the increasing burden of private education just to help me prepare for the death triangle.
Because of Korea''s education problem, many of our elementary, middle and high school students are going abroad to study.
Studying abroad at an early age can provide certain advantages as it is easy to understand and learn a foreign language, obtain international experience, and broaden one''s perspective.
However, it can cause serious social problems as it can break up families.
When one of my friends had to go abroad for his study, his family was separated from each other and ended up being a wild goose family.''''
And what''s even sadder is that his parents had to reduce the size of their apartment to pay for the expense of him studying abroad.
Even in my view as a high school student with a minimal knowledge of social issues, this is a very serious educational and social problem in Korea.
Gari.hahm@gmail.com
Gari Hahm is a first year student of Myungji Foreign Language High School, Seoul, Korea. |
