[이범의 불편한 진실]Korean education heading toward destruction

Although there is confusion in the categories of the Bank of Korea governor’s regional proportional selection system, the proposal can be a positive opportunity.

In contrast, the National Education Commission’s plan to dualize the CSAT and to entrust the paper-based evaluation of academic records to an external agency is bleak.

One way or another, the National Education Commission is ready to shake up the college entrance system again, and I can’t help but sigh.

As I watch the recent news going back and forth about the future of Korean education, I can’t help but sigh. The National Education Commission is poised to shake up the college entrance system once again. Bank of Korea Governor Lee Chang-yong suddenly brought up a regional proportional selection system. The progressive education community calls for the resolution of university rankings, but is unable to suggest exactly what ‘resolution’ means and how to reach that state. A head-on collision is expected between the government pushing for the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) digital textbooks and those opposing it.

The regional proportional selection system proposed by President Chang-yong Lee is as follows. Among high school students nationwide, the proportion of students from Gyeongbuk region is about 5%. So, for example, out of the 160 students admitted to the Department of Business Administration at Seoul National University, 8 people, or 5%, are selected from applicants from the Gyeongbuk region. This is not to be limited to some rolling admissions like the existing regionally balanced selection, but to select most of the admission quota in major prestigious universities represented by ‘SKY’ in proportion to the number of students in each region, regardless of whether they are rolling or regular.

I agree with the purpose of regional proportional selection. If you ask me to reveal both sides of my stance on this system, I think I will have to think about it for a long time. However, in my opinion, Governor Lee is missing the point. He is leaving aside the ‘intensity of competition’ and focusing on the ‘results of competition’.

We look forward to further expansion of the ‘regional proportionality’ discussion.

What is the ‘result of competition’? This is differential status distribution. How can seats at prestigious universities or medical schools be distributed favorably to local students? How can it be distributed unfavorably to students with special needs or high incomes? Even in the 2018 college admissions public debate, the political faction and the academic faction fiercely debated this topic. Of course it is an important issue. In a country where there is already extreme concentration in the metropolitan area, and even as the inheritance of wealth through education is worsening, efforts to correct this are meaningful. It is also a frequent research topic for sociologists and economists who view education as a major opportunity for class reproduction. President Lee Chang-yong also published a paper in 2003 titled ‘Changes in the Entrance Examination System: Who Gets into Seoul National University?’

What is ‘intensity of competition’? This refers to the time and effort spent on competition, private education expenses, etc. If the ‘outcome of competition’ is a matter of how many dragons there are in the stream, the ‘intensity of competition’ is a matter of how much stress and costs one feels and pays in the process of becoming a dragon. The two should not be confused. If competition in education eases, will class mobility become more active? There is no law like that. For example, comparing Korea and Germany, Korea has much more competition for college entrance than Germany, but Germany lags behind Korea in terms of intergenerational class mobility (movement between income brackets).

President Lee Chang-yong’s plan is missing structural reform to reduce the ‘intensity of competition.’ It does not touch the existing university system at all. They propose to change only the ‘results of competition’ through a regional proportional selection system. In this way, the unit of competition becomes smaller. It is segmented into city-level competition rather than national-level competition. President Lee Chang-yong even predicts that “Daechi-dong academies will be dispersed throughout the country.”

In fact, a plan comparable to this was introduced 20 years ago. In 2004, during the time of President Roh Moo-hyun, the government announced a plan to reform college admissions for the 2008 school year and that regular admissions would be based on academic records. It was a time when rolling admissions still only accounted for one-third of the quota, so the promotion of regular admissions was important. However, Korea’s GPA is a relative evaluation unprecedented in the world, so both the top 4% in Gangnam and the top 4% in the countryside receive the same grade 1. In this way, the effect of equal selection is maximized. This reform plan was later not properly implemented and degenerated into the so-called ‘triangle of death’, in which students had to do well in all grades, college entrance exams, and essays. The dissolution of this triangle was one of the first measures taken by the Lee Myung-bak government as soon as it took power. However, if the government had managed it well and the original plan had been realized, it would have been chosen more evenly across regions than President Lee Chang-yong’s plan.

The problem was that, depending on the size of the high school, there was a bloody zero-sum competition between dozens to 100 students in each liberal arts and science department. In the national CSAT, at least you don’t feel like you’re competing with your partner sitting next to you. However, the level of competition in my academic department is small, so all my friends feel like competitors. In other words, as the unit of competition was segmented from ‘nationwide’ to ‘school’, the perceived intensity of competition increased. Sure enough, in 2005, when it was first applied, incidents of high school freshmen committing suicide after taking their first midterm exams continued to spread across the country, and for the first time in history, candlelight vigils voluntarily led by students were held. The representative of a youth group that supported the rally at the time left an afterword, saying, “Progressive education groups came to us and scolded us, saying, ‘What a good system this is!’”

Of course, President Lee Chang-yong’s proposal is different from the Roh Moo-hyun administration’s policy. Although it is the same segmentation policy, ‘regions’ (probably metropolitan local governments) are much larger units than ‘schools’, so even if President Lee Chang-yong’s proposal is accepted, the perceived intensity of competition will not soar. In any case, the important thing is that this is by no means a measure to alleviate the “overheated entrance competition” that he declared as his goal. Rather, there is room to partially increase the intensity of competition. Parents in Gangnam may increase private education in order to squeeze through narrow doors, while parents in rural areas may increase private education in order to seize expanded opportunities.

The basic framework of the National Education Commission is ‘ideal’

That doesn’t mean I’m against it. I am only pointing out the confusion of categories that appears in his approach, and I believe that his proposal itself may be a positive opportunity. We hope that the discussion sparked by him will expand further and develop into new proposals.

In comparison, the internal plans of the ‘Mid- to Long-Term Educational Development Expert Committee’ under the National Education Commission, such as dualizing the CSAT, entrusting paper-and-pencil evaluation of academic records to an external agency, and abolishing high school standardization, are truly bleak. In particular, the idea of ​​having an external organization issue questions for internal exams is unprecedented in the world and is simply astounding. Of course, it is somewhat understandable that it was a plan to get away from the relative evaluation system. This is because there is no country that makes relative evaluations using indicators such as rank grades or standard scores.

When relative evaluation is performed, the advantages and disadvantages between subjects are maximized, and phenomena such as avoidance of physics and avoidance of economics become rampant. This is because the absurdity arises that ‘students with excellent academic ability are avoiding subjects that they prefer.’ So, if you look at advanced countries excluding Korea, grades are given based on absolute evaluation, whether on academic records or college entrance exams, or when scores are given, raw scores are given or scaled scores are given by calculating pros and cons.

However, there are concerns that grades will be inflated if grades are evaluated on an absolute basis in Korea. In fact, for several years from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, internal grades were evaluated on an absolute basis (sumiyangga), but grade inflating by making midterm and final exams extremely easy and giving ‘scores’ to as many students as possible was rampant. It is back to relative road evaluation. Absolute evaluation should be introduced, but there are concerns about grades being inflated, so it seems like they have considered entrusting the evaluation of grades to an external organization.

This does not mean that there are no similar cases. There is bound to be variation in academic performance by teacher and school, but some countries have special devices in place to minimize variation. In Denmark, some classes are selected as a sample from each high school and taken a standardized test, and these scores are compared to calculate the deviation by high school and correct the internal grades. Many provinces in Canada require achievement assessments or graduation certification exams administered by province or region to be included in a certain percentage of academic records. However, even in this case, it is completely different from the case where the entire evaluation itself is submitted by an external organization. Above all, calling a test that is not written by the teacher in charge an ‘internal exam’ is itself a contradiction in terms.

Above all, the basic framework put forward by the National Education Commission is strange. Four debates are scheduled to be held in November and December. The third debate will cover university restructuring and investment expansion, strengthening education and research competitiveness, and education finance, and the fourth debate will cover college admissions, private education, and university ranking. . The core of the university ranking is the extreme financial gap between universities and the resulting qualitative inequality in education, but the cause is addressed in the third round and the results are dealt with in the fourth round. For some reason, I can’t find any hope even in the National Education Commission, so I can’t help but sigh.

■Beom Lee

I majored in biology as an undergraduate at Seoul National University and the history and philosophy of science in graduate school. After completing the doctoral program, I became a college entrance exam science inquiry instructor and participated in the founding of ‘Mega Study’. He has the rare record of retiring in 2003 during the ‘Ilta Instructor’ era. Afterwards, he transformed into an education critic and policy expert. He worked as a policy aide at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, vice president of the Institute for Democracy, and a columnist for the Hankyoreh, Sisa, and Huffington Post. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Cambridge, England. I began my research with a critical analysis of Korean education policies over the past 40 years. His writings include others.