Foreign language high schools face lawmaker attacks
Foreign language high schools have become a boiling issue after some lawmakers began a move earlier this month to eliminate them because they allegedly spur on already intense private education fever in the country.Korea’s top organization for teachers officially opposed the attempt yesterday, and heads of foreign language high schools are preparing collective countermeasures.
“I basically oppose the plan to abolish foreign language high schools,” said Lee Won-hee, head of the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations, in an emergency press conference. “But they should develop significant reform plans of their curriculum and recruiting process that everyone can sympathize with.”
He stressed that foreign language high schools are not a “failure,” as claimed. “Foreign language high schools were born to reduce the evil practice of a uniform, equalized educational system and meet the demand for flexible education, and they are loaded with competence,” he said. “You are not supposed to abolish foreign language high schools simply based on the logic that private education spending should be reduced.”
His remarks came after Chung Doo-un, a lawmaker with the ruling Grand National Party and member of the Presidential Council for Future & Vision, reiterated his persistently negative view of foreign language high schools.
Responding to a KBS radio show host who said that critics say that blaming foreign language schools for private education costs is a “witch hunt,” Chung replied: “In general, a witch hunt refers to hunting for someone who is not a witch. Foreign language high schools are definitely witches.”
The lawmaker reignited debate over scrapping the foreign language high school system that was born in 1992. Three years ago, then Vice Education Minister Kim Jin-pyo came up with a plan to get rid of the special-purpose high schools. It failed after harsh protests from the educational and political sector and even the then-opposition Grand National Party.
During a routine parliamentary hearing on the Education Ministry two weeks ago, Chung recommended that all foreign language high schools be transformed into autonomous private high schools.
While foreign language high schools pick students through individually developed multilevel screening processes, including paper exams, English listening tests, interviews and middle school transcripts, autonomous private high schools will select students through a lottery system. They are to be launched next March. The minimum requirement for applicants for entry into an autonomous private high school is a top-50 percent ranking in middle school. However, only top-tier students can pass the stringent process for admission to foreign language high schools.
Chung said he will submit a proposal for a revised law governing the recruiting process for high schools by the end of the month.
The main opposition Democratic Party insists that foreign language high schools be entirely scrapped. DP lawmaker Ahn Min-seok said if they are merely transformed into autonomous private high schools, competition won’t be gone.
The Education Ministry said it will unveil its official position by the end of this year after taking into account opinions from various sides.
In response to political pressure, Daewon Foreign Language High School rushed to adopt reform measures - abolishing the English listening test in 2011 and selecting students only through interviews and their middle school transcripts.
Heads of four foreign language high schools in Gyeonggi held an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the matter. They said they could “never accept” the reform plan now under discussion.
Kang Sung-hwa, head of an association for nationwide foreign language high schools and principal of Goyang Foreign Language High School, said she will block the move “by using every lawful means.”
“Excessive private education has been caused by the collapse of public education, the government’s education equalization policies and harsh competition to get into universities, not foreign language high schools,” she said. “Even if foreign language high schools are eliminated, Korea’s private education market won’t shrink.”
Foreign language high schools, along with science high schools, are classified as special-purpose high schools. They aim at fostering students with expertise in foreign languages and science. The schools are given wider autonomy in management and curriculum compared with ordinary high schools. Daewon and Daeil, initially launched as foreign language education institutes under respective private foundations in 1984, were the first to be officially approved as foreign language high schools in 1992.
Foreign language high schools gained the reputation in the mid-1990s of sending the majority of their students to prestigious universities.
Even GNP Rep. Chung admitted in a previous media interview that he tried to send his kids to a foreign language high school, but gave up later due to the highly challenging nature of the admission process.
Since only those students with outstanding school records and academic performance can obtain admission, many aspiring applicants attend private education institutes, or hagwon, or are privately tutored. The costs can be great.
The efforts of parents to have their children gain admission to foreign language high schools have accelerated in recent years because the schools now guarantee social success as well. Recent data showed that the four high schools among the top 10 high schools nationwide that produced judges in the past 10 years were foreign language high schools. Among 2,386 judges at the present, 58 were from Daewon Foreign Language High School, the most in the nation.
Ironically, those older schools saw their reputations tainted after the Korean government implemented a so-called “equalization” policy in 1974 against harsh competition and rampant illegal tutoring.
Following the new policy, students entering ordinary high schools were no longer able to select and apply for the schools they wanted to attend and special-purpose high schools have increasingly replaced them.
By Seo Ji-eun [spring@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)