The Grand Narrative

Personal Stuff/Warm-Up 

Sorry for the delay in posting; it’s mostly been due to this horrendous ‘rainy’ season, the most humid but driest ever as far as I’m concerned, and it’s been playing havoc with my sleeping. Realising that this lack of sleep was the cause of almost all of the arguments my wife and I have been having recently, we bit the bullet today and paid someone 60,000 today to move our small air-conditioner from the bedroom, where we couldn’t use it because our baby daughter sleeps there, to the living room where we sleep and it can and will be used continuously until it explodes. I’m enjoying the fruits of that decision as I finish the rest of this post up (that cheery note was Tuesday;  it gave me 냉방 *%#^ing 병 the next day and its been difficult to do anything but teach and then come home and crash in bed since sorry).

But I have to admit that I actually started this essay post last Saturday, but it threw up so many interesting tangents raised more issues than I originally intended, so I’ve had to take a break to step back and think about it more, and even consult some books for the odd point that I haven’t thought about in many years. I also decided to give it a bit more coherence and make my arguments flow a little more logically than usual, which took time. To refresh your memory also, in my last post on this subject I said I was going to explain why the University Entrance Exam, or 수능시험, was so important in Korea, but not how, and in particular I didn’t want to get into the:

Whole convuluted history of the pre-colonial concepts of education, the establishment of schools by Christian missionaries, the huge expansion of development-driven schooling under Japanese colonialism, the continuation of and imposition on top of that of American liberal education ideals after both wars, and then the playing out of the convoluted mix of all that in the five decades since.

I still don’t, it’s quite a mouthful, and like I said there’s already an excellent book on the subject. But, strangely enough, different aspects of it don’t seem to conveniently split into “hows” and “whys,” and after some thought it turns out that I can’t ignore pre-colonial concepts of education because they still have such a huge impact on Korean society today. So, instead of naively assuming I could ignore it, instead that’ll be the focus of this post today. Or to be more precise, it will be:

The High Status of Educators and Education in Korea

1. The Chinese Background

My first introduction to Asian education, albeit obliquely, was through one of my freshman Chinese History lecturers Dr. Richard Philips, who was a such a sinophile that he would often wear Chinese-style shirts to class. I’m sure I’m doing his lectures a grave disservice, it was 1995 and I was 19 and I was interested in many other things in the lecture hall besides the Opium War after all, but I do remember his descriptions of the exams in China that had to be passed to become a province official or civil servant (for want of better terms). From what I recall, the exams consisted of little more than word for word recitations of Confucian classics. I say “little more,” but in reality the memorization required was an herculean feat, and Dr. Philips enjoyed mentioning relative “youths” of 45 or so who were famous for passing after only 10 or 20 years.

Three things of note from this already: first, it was an ostensibly meritocratic system, but obviously only men of leisure had the 20 years or so that were required; second, the pinnacle of education for at least a millenia in China was essentially useless, requiring the rote-memorization of increasingly outdated texts that were arguably never all that relevant to the practicalities of governance anyway; and third, this image of education in this part of the world, however simplisticly I’ve described it, is all I had to try and understand education in Korea upon my entrance to it in a rather shabby hagwon in Jinju in 2000. But I still mention it to any lonely newbie unfortunate enough to find me as the only other Westener in Starbucks that day, as from what I’ve personally seen of and read about the education system here in the 7 years since makes me think that that titbit is still relevant and useful to know.

2. Korean Elites’ Affinity with China 

Yes, China isn’t Korea, but Korea has been a vassal or tributary state of China for a great deal of its history, and given the present administration’s increasing anti-Americanism and cooperation with China then many Western commentators can’t help but say that it may be one day again. But socially and culturally, it ensured that Korean elites have long emulated their Chinese counterparts. Michael Breen, for instance, argues in Chapter 7 of this book that this was to demonstrate to the latter that Korea was China’s “little brother” rather than an”inferior and threatening barbarian state,” although with my Antipodean background, I would have described this as a cultural cringe instead. Given my own experience of the results of that in the Australia and New Zealand psyches, I am not suprised that Koreans attempted to ‘civilise’ themselves with the zeal with which they did; not for nothing is Korean known as more Confucian than China (which is not a feather in its cap as far as I’m concerned).

2a. Evidence: The Use of Korean/Hangul

To give you a sense of this, consider the actual usage of the Korean script hangul, which many Koreans will claim to you (within 5 minutes of meeting you) to be “the most scientific language in the world,” and who will be genuinely shocked at your complete ignorance of it before you came to Korea. Hangul is indeed wonderful, being invented in 1443 by 세종대왕/Sejong the Great (the name is deserved) to spread literacy to the public by providing an alphabet of 24 letters instead of the 1000s of characters in Chinese. With about an hour a day spent on it, it will take you about 1-2 weeks to learn; it’s sad that so few foreigners do that most Koreans will be surprised that you can use it at all, making them think that it’s harder than it is. It’s also strange, because being able to read and write it so soon makes it an excellent base language to go on to studying relatively similar Japanese or Chinese, whereas acheiving literacy in those languages takes years (my English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese-speaking Osaka-based friend, for instance, still has issues, despite speaking Japanese fluently for at least the last 7 years).

Unfortunately for Koreans, Sejong was a rare blip on the intellectual landscape, and despite Hangul’s obvious advantages to modern readers, elites were deadset against it, ensuring that Hangul wasn’t actually used by a majority of the population until the late-1800s. This was partially because literacy in Chinese was an important means of distinguishing themselves from commoners, an important point that I’ll return to in a moment, but the primary reason is because Korean state structures were explicitly modelled after the Chinese, the Korean equivalent scholar-official/civil servant class being known as 양반/Yangban during the 대조선국/Joseon Dynasty of 1392-1910 (and, according to the Wikipedia article on them, with equivalents in the 고려국/Goryeo Dynasty of 918-1392 too). I think it’s no great suprise then, that the majority of Korean words to do with politics (or science) are based on Chinese, although actually this makes them far much easier to memorize for non-native speakers.

2b. Sounds-like-a-tangent-but-isn’t-really: The Implications For Korean Nationalism

But the language issue has wider implications than just my Korean study methods, or demonstrating that Korean elites were complete Sinophiles. For Joseon Dynasty Korea was a rigidly stratified society, and the Yangban generally lived ”either in seperate parts of the capital or in seperate villages.” While of course the use of Korean would have been a big part of the working lives of lower ranked officials that mostly dealt with commoners (but described by Breen as 중인, or middle class, and not yangban at all), Yangban explicitly differentiated themselves by the use of Chinese as their lingua franca. Thus, increasing social status meant increased use of Chinese but increased distance from ordinary Koreans, with a corresponding identification more with Chinese elites. This reminds me of Dr. Philips’ (or perhaps it was Greg Bankoff, mentioned in an earlier post) descriptions of the world view of Chinese people (with the same system) as concentric circles of power eminating from the physical presence of the emperor, which is a good metaphor for the inherent heirarchy in Korean education that I’ll get back to soon. And, despite my repuation for tangents, I think that it’s difficult not to bring up how uncomfortably this reality sits with what you normally hear about Korean nationalism.

The first thing you will probably hear about Korean nationalism from Koreans (again, often within the first five minutes of meeting you) is that their country dates back to 2333 BC, the unspoken implication being that your own country is a joke in comparison. But regardless of inconvenient little details like, for instance, the fact that for over 700 years the Peninsula was split into four kingdoms that happily pitted “Koreans” against “Koreans” in various wars against each other, the physical locations of two of which that just happen to match those of regions that are still rivals in South Korea today, having elites speaking Chinese, identifying themselves with their Chinese counterparts, distancing themselves through language and other means from 95%+ of the surrounding population does not make them sound very “Korean.”

As a brilliant book (on the right below) I recently bought on the subject says, nationalism in the modern sense of the word didn’t really start in Korea until the late-1800s, strangely enough when the use of Hangul became widespread, the promotion of which (it turns out) was expressely for nationalistic reasons, and while there are strong arguments that there was a sense of “nation” in Korea previously (but existing for more like for 400 rather than for 4000 years), and there was certainly a uniquely long-lived state-structure, Korea was not a nation-state because these wannabe-Chinese did not want to be part of Korean “imagined communities,” which ultimately relied on commoners and non-Yangban intellectuals to construct themselves from the bottom up. 

2c. In Turn, Korean Nationalism’s Implications for Korean Education

Perhaps not automatically believing this “Korea is 4340 years old” line, and so picking up your travel books which, we all have to admit, we learnt most of what we know about Korea from,  you will quickly read that Koreans are nationalistic and patriotic…okay, that explains it, and the 2333BC thing merely sounds benign, and even cute when you hear that Korea’s founder supposedly married a bear who had become a woman by eating garlic and mugwort in a cave for 100 days, and kudos for reading some of the history section at the front of Lonely Planet: Korea. But at best banal statements that Koreans are nationalistic are not really very helpful: which countries don’t have nationalistic citizens? Monaco? Sudan? And at worst it is very misleading, for the familial, bloodlines-based nationalism that is prevelant in Korea is qualitatively different from that in America say, or even New Zealand (which I personally found to be nationalistic). This is a huge topic that many further posts in this blog will be devoted to, but as an apertif consider this, this, this, and this video to see how different Korean nationalism really is to what you’re used probably used to:

Korean nationalism isn’t the subject of this post, or wasn’t supposed to be anyway, but in any discussion of education in Korea you can not avoid the fact that the promotion of bloodline-based nationalism is a fundamental component of the Korean education system, and so it had to be mentioned sooner or later. It will be the subject of later posts: so why not now? If you still can’t appreciate the importance, then consider this, this, this, this and…hell, virtually anything the Metropolitician writes on the subject, who has been doing so for years and far more ably than I ever could (but maybe start with this). If you do, suddenly a great deal about Korea will suddenly make a lot of sense, and you will realise that the lack of critical thinking skills that the education system engenders is arguably Korea’s biggest problem today (which I’ll get onto below).

3. My Apologies for the Tangent: Some much needed light relief

By the way, I put that picture of the books up because they’ll be mentioned a great deal in following posts on this subject, not to prove how intellectual I am by dazzling you with all my academic tomes (I think my geekiness is well-established). True, interviews of professors on the news back in New Zealand always required some footage of them working at their desk (as if the camera wasn’t there) with full bookcases behind them to prove to viewers that said professors were indeed intellectual before we heard them speak, which was rather patronising to viewers come to think of it, although I confess it was amusing one day to help a professor friend frantically rearrange his office for TVNZ camera crew that had called to say they’d like to come and “chat” in 30 mins.

So, I could try to provide pictures like that if anyone likes, but once my daughter figured out how to stand she started pulling books out of shelves with a gusto. The first time, not only did my wife not stop her, she thought it was cute and took pictures and videos. Here is a much younger Alice getting stuck into what was once my fiction section:

(Yes, if I’d known 8 months later I’d be posting these cute pics on the internet I may have removed The Joy of Sex and The Complete Guide to Sexual Loving from the shelves beforehand…but then maybe not. What’s to be embarassed about?)

Thanks to that, now my books are haphazardly spread in piles in and on any spare shelf, TV top, Wardrobe top, or Kitchen Cupboards, basically anywhere that Alice can’t (yet) reach, so no can do. Sorry.

4. Back to the Show: Korea’s Philosopher-Kings Philosopher-Civil Servants

In some ways Aristotle was born in the wrong region of the world, for while his student Alexander the Great was certainly very pretty, he didn’t quite end up as the “Philospher King” that Aristotle had hoped for. I blame the accent myself, for while an Irish accent is annoyingly hip, non-poets should really choose something else to sound pretentious and intellectual with.

Or maybe Alexander was philosophical after all, but he didn’t fit in well in Greece because everyone laughed at his accent, and so he ended up attacking this Elephant in India years later because it was in the way of him getting to Korea. Yes, I know there’s easier ways to get to Korea than via India, but as far as I know the Greeks thought the Caspian Sea was an ocean, so give the guy a break. No, don’t stop me, I’m on  a roll here…

I think he undoubtedly wanted to get away from Greece and come to Korea for 4 reasons:

1. Military officials were also a big component of the Yangban class, I didn’t get a chance to mention it earlier, so Alexander would have fitted right in here.
2. No matter how liberal sexual mores were back then, it must have been very very frustrating to see Angelina Jolie everyday but be her son, so lacking ocean-traversing technology Korea was about as far away as you could get from that unfortunate situation.
3. As a sexually-frustrated pretty boy it made perfect sense to come to Korea.
4. Finally, because the predecessors to the Yangban intellectual-class (of his day) were held in very high esteem in Korean society. But come to think of it he would have needed to bone up on Confucious before taking the exams…Aha! That’s why he was going to Korea via India, instead of the northern route: he was planning to go to China first, as where better to learn about Confucious than his home country itself?

Okay, seriously now folks, I mention Alexander because while they were not kings, the meritocracy engendered by the Yangban’s integral and long-standing place in the Korean state seems much closer to Aristotle’s ideal of intellectuals in power than Colin Farell was, for, according to Breen again, they “saw their prime purpose as the devotion to learning and self-cultivation, and the only employment they aspired to was government service.” I see two direct effects of this for modern Korean education, the first positive, but with many strange side effects, and the second wholly negative:

4a. The Korean Public’s Perceptions of Students and Educators

When I was a student in New Zealand in the mid-1990s, the public at large seemed to have an image of students as lazy long-haired communist rebels, which many students indeed had of themselves too (I could never pull it off with my hair though). But the introduction of student fees a few years previously, rapidly rising to American levels but in a country that lacked a tradition of parents saving for children’s college tuition fees even before they were born, meant that most were too busy starving or racking up huge loans to protest about anything more than the fees themselves; hopefully the New Zealand public’s image of students is a little more realistic these days. In contrast, while Korean university students are justifiably far far lazier than their Western counterparts as I’ve already explained, students are regarded very differently in Korean society.

Being so recent academically, much of what I read and watched about Korea at University in the mid-1990s was about democratisation in 1986-87, and while I can’t give sources because they’re in a storage shed in New Zealand right now, please take my word for it that most of them said that students were at the forefront of the democratisation movement because of their long-lived high status in Korean society. Student’s strong role in Tiananmen in 1989 also comes to mind, and while I got heartily sick of studying democratisation at university I’d be interested to go back and see what role students had in it in Taiwan too.

Against this, there’s the obvious retort that what democratisation movements, or indeed modern protest movements, didn’t have students playing a large role? Like I said in NZ, for instance, the word student is synonmouous with protests. But no matter how generalising it is I can’t help but link Korean students to their yangban ancestors. For crucially, despite for all their flaws, and regardless of what they ever actually learned at Confucian school, for hundreds of years they were considered by Korean society as the moral protectors of the nation from the whims and caprices of avaricous monarchs. As Breen says, with the Neo-Confucian ethos of the new Joseon state, it was believed that “the perfect society began not with the system, but with the personal morality of the monarch….Looked at the other way round, instability was indication of a flawed leadership….A wise king’s strategy was to select learned bureacrats both for his own education and for the implementation of virtuous policy. The most important means for ensuring that the best talent rose into these positions was the establishment of selection by examination, as opposed to birthright.”

Thus, as far back as the fourteenth century scholars were placed on a moral pedestal above kings. Again, jumping from this to modern Koreans’ low “trust” of politicians but high regard of Neo-Yangban/professors doesn’t sound very profound or even Korean, but I think that it is: again, based my own experiences of the New Zealand public’s reactions to professors in the media, while they don’t not trust them many focus more on their (alleged) lack of dress sense and social skills than anything else, and of those that actually listen to them the consensus is usually that they’re too bloody ivory tower to have much relevance to real life. 

But the consequences in Korea of being put on a pedestal for over 600 years? I must admit, I’ve never actually worked in a Korean university, but I know people who do/have and of course I’ve read a lot about them (Korean Universities that is, although I do occasionally google my friends for fun). And the impression I get is of strictly hierarchal places where:

• Freshman students will protest if their major is being discontinued by their university, because that will mean there’ll be no younger students to lord over in coming years.
• Unlike the egalitarian relationships that exist in most Western universites, masters students here are like virtual slaves that have to clean their supervisor’s offices, make them coffee, and do a lot of the grading and other administrative work of the professor that is often the only actual “work” the professor does.
• That tenure is ridiculously easy (but not allowed for barbarian foreigners of course), having more relationship to age than any actual research done or publications written.
• And finally where there is so little regard for actual academic work that professors routinely add their names to their students’ own work, sometimes even completely plagarising them. And don’t get me started on the plagarism of works from overseas. Lest those last points sound too outrageous, I should provide sources, but there’s so many ex-professor government ministers resigning these days because reporters have dug up and investigated “their” supposed research publications that you can do it your damn self I don’t think I need to.

Not that anyone does anymore ever since Japan’s “Lost Decade,” bear all the above in mind (and read this) when you hear that you can throw a stone in Seoul and hit a PhD holder. Ironically, the examinations to become an actual civil servant are much more meritocratic than academia now, being one of the few jobs obtainable solely (albeit plus an failable interview though) through a good grade in the examinations for it, regardless of who you are or which univeristy you went to. This attracts a disproportionate number of women, and as it’s also one of the few jobs for life remaining in Korea after the IMF Crisis 1997 (I’ll discuss this more in my 2nd post on Korean drinking culture), at any one time up to 20% of Korean 20-somethings are studying for this exam: my 25 year-old sister in law has tried and failed the 90% interview threshold several times in the last 3 years, and my parents in law are (not unreasonably) beginning to suggest she give up and try something else.  

While the degree is unbelievable (no pun intended), all these flaws of Korean universities can and do occur in Western universities too, and there are many intelligent people in Korean academia, some of whose works currently sit on my shelves. Also, many ordinary Koreans are not stupid and are aware of the flaws in university education here: the movie in the poster below is actually very much about this (she’s called Moon So-Ri/문소리 by the way).

But despite all this, and I know I’m generalising because I’m tired and want this herculean post finished, Western universties generally being better funded means that they are more likely to fail and expel students who plagarise as much as many Korean professors, and perhaps only with plagarism on the scale that it is in Korea would a professor think he or she could get away with fabrication on the scale of Hwang Woo-suk/황우석. And simply nowhere will you find a country with so many people willing to lap up the pronouncements of professors as gospel truth, no matter how crazed, simply because they come from a professor (again, this is why critical thinking is sooo important).

I personally began to learn of this when I visited Insa-dong in Seoul and saw the only Starbucks in Korea which had a Hangul instead of English logo. The Wikipedia article on that in the link is simply wrong: this was not to preserve the “traditional feel” of the street as claimed, but was instead due to a local professor claiming that all the English on signs and things around Korea was harming Korean teenager’s Korean ability. No, instead of telling him to STFU, the local council banned English signs in the whole Gu area.

I could go on and on with more examples, but won’t: if that isn’t enough for you, consider how you’re in Korea, teaching without any teaching qualifications whatsoever…if it weren’t for the high status a degree confirms upon you here, would anyone let a marine biology, art-history, or even Korea Studies recent graduate anywhere near an English classroom? While the populist Korean media has a big role in the mania about foreigners with fake degrees, as I explained in a previous post, shock and a sense of betrayal after falsely placing someone on so high a pedestal has a large role in the reaction as well.

4b Concentric Circles Upon Circles Around Seoul

For all the flaws of the civil-service examinations in the Joseon Dynasty, they did allow some relative social mobility, very important in what was at its founding an almost caste-like rigid social structure but also in what became an increasingly trade-averse Hermit Kingdom over time. According to Breen again, in practice “there was some fluidity…as the ‘middle people’ class [중인] became permitted to sit the civil service exams, some peasants became rich and the numbers of impoverished Yangban without government office increased.” While over time many Yangban became very corrupt themselves, which frustrated commoners used touristy masks l(ike the one below) to satire in dances, the fact remains that a Seoul-centered, meritocratic examination system was in place, through which the successfull rote-learning of essentially useless information would open the doors to status, power, and even riches. Yes, you guessed it, I think pretty much the same can be said of Korea today.

Have you ever seen a Korean resume? Rhetorical question. Personally, the first ever resume I typed up after graduation and having duly read What Color is Your Parachute from the local library, was a very very sad affair. But then a 7-year older and wiser friend helped, writing in with this skill there, this attribute there, and before you know it my A4 page was filled up quite nicely thank you very much. But in Korea I would have been dead job-wise, for there’s no such thing as a personalised resume: instead, they are all standardized forms you buy at stationary stores, with spaces to fill in for your University and the degree you got, and then your work experience, if any. Although in the past 5 years letters of introduction have started to become important, the logical assumption (for graduates) at least is that if saying where you went to University is all that employers want to know, then that’s all that’s important, which is indeed the case.

In Korea, the 3 top Universities everyone wants to get into are Seoul National (SNU), Yonsei, and Korea Universities, all in Seoul and collectively known as “SKY,” and being a graduate of one is virtually mandatory for entrance into politics or business or high society in general, and if you are on you will have guaranteed jobs at virtually any company in Korea. According to Michael J.Seth, p.250, its also “frequently the most imporant criterion for evaluation…in marraige and informal interpersonal relations” too. This is why some of my 재수 students doing their exam again, are some of the most intelligent 19 year-olds I’ve ever met in my entire life, but are stuck in their institute 12+ hours a day 5 days (and a Saturday morning) a week studying for a year, because their scores weren’t good enough for SKY, and it is why most institutes teaching high school students here prominently display the names of the ex-students that did make it in their advertisements. 

Of course, many other countries have similar series of middle and high schools: what immediatately come to mind are all the Ivy League Universities in the US, Eton Private (strangely known as “public” in England) School and then Cambridge and Oxford in England, and the ecoles in France. But there are some crucial differences. First, despite the experiences of one commentator I think that the students of all of them would have gotten much much more sleep than their Korean counterparts between the ages of 13-18. Second, while I remember an interesting Lexington article in the Economist years ago that talked about a few Ivy League Universities liberally giving ‘A’s seemingly for the mere virtue of having worked hard to make it there, most were still academically rigourous and, with their fees and alumni associations, still the best Universities in the world.

But Korean Universities are so mediocre that a degree from overseas is increasingly more highly valued by employers. Even SNU, despite all its money, I think rarely if ever makes it into the top 100 Universites. This is because they don’t learn shit, 19 year-olds rightly feeling they deserve a fucking break after getting into SKY, and boy, do they take a break and do what the fuck they like with their first ever free time for 6 years. And it would surely be bizarre if Korean education suddenly went from rote-learning of facts to pass the test from 13-18 to creativity, exploration, and critical thinking at 19. No, I can’t find the post but I’m pretty sure it was the Metropolitican, with much more experience of all levels of Korean eduaction than I, who once said that the that teaching style at SNU is just the same as any other Korean University but in much nicer buildings.

This would be understandable if it was just for students at SKY; like I said similar problems can exist for similar reasons in the Ivy League. But this phenomenon is across the board, for getting a low score in the exam and accepting entrance into a lowly-ranked University is also a life choice, one to settle for an ordinary life, and while in most countries genuine study could definately be used to improve your life chances despite bad grades when you were 18/19, remember that its all about what you fill in that empty box on that resume form here. So to do so would be pointless (with the important exception, of course, of learning English, Japanese, and now Chinese; not for nothing was it not very normal for English speaking-Westeners to go to Korea to teach English before the IMF Crisis 10 years ago), but SKY students damn well need their break too, but the problem of academic quality is compounded outside of SKY by severe shortages of funds.

An effect of this, a complain complaint on Korean ESL message boards, is that freshmen students, who like students anywhere drink and have fun every night, have mandatory English classes at University, and so turn up to class asleep and hungover, don’t learn anything as a result, are failed by their foreign teacher (who could fart better English than they could speak, even if were paid to), but then the English Dean will bump up their grades to ensure they pass…for the University desperately needs their money. And Koreans wonder why they spend so much money on English education, a great deal of which is to bring English teachers like us from abroad, but are still amongst the worst English speakers in the world…

I still see concentric rints of power around Seoul in South Korea because all the best Confucian schools, and then the only Western Missionary-based schools and Universities, and then the Universities set up or expanded under Japanese Colonialism are all in Seoul, and Koreans have been moving there for the past 50 years primarily for this reason. What’s that you say? Seoul only has a population of 10 million or so, Korea 49, big deal. No, that figure, often quoted is simply wrong: the population of the Seoul Metropolitan Area is 22-24 million, almost half the population of Korea, and making in 3rd biggest city in the world but in only the 108th biggest country in the world. Now you know why you have to move to Seoul to make it in Korea, yes?

 5. Hurried Finish to a Conclusion

I can’t for the life of me find the page, but I remember that Michael J.Seth summed up the convoluted, inexorably difficult to reform Korean Education system as the way is because, on the one hand it has its elite Universites and certain high and middle schools that are required to get into to in turn get into SKY (which is why my 13,14, and 15 year-olds are always so frantically studying), for all the reasons above. But on the other hand, the social leveling of Korea as a result of the Korean War is a fundamental part of its society, economic development and ethos, and it has engendered what what would be called in New Zealand and Australia a tall-poppy syndrome. As Baltimoron mentioned, and a recent Economist article did too, it means that despite everything mentioned about status and the high value attached to education, gifted students are discouraged from excelling beyond their peers in this part of the world(!!!). For the education system as a whole, it means that parents damn well want good schools to be available for their children, the opportunity to attend them for the sake of their future life chances but also to distinguish themselves from their peers, but if they don’t, then those damn rich brat SKY students had better not get any extra funding or special treatment whatsoever. The two drives in the education system, one elitist and one populist, can simply not be reconciled, and this explains why so many Koreans know just how bad their eduaction system is, know what the problems are, but find them soooo difficult to reform.

6. Postscript

I am simply never ever ever doing a post that length again! As I become more experienced with the blog, hopefully I’ll figure out how to do all that in more postable-sizsed chunks. In the meantime, if you’re reading this on Friday the 27th, apologies because I strongly suspect I’m going to have to do some major editing that day.

P.S. Erk! After all that, and all those links to Wikipedia, I’ve only just found this section on the subject! I’d better check it out.

P.P.S. Oh my Gawd…is it really that long? I’ve only just seen it on the actual site for the first time…free beer for whoever reads all of it!

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