Character building, not bullying

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Character building, not bullying

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A student at Yangseo High School in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi, explains his work to his classmates during an art class. The high school is known for including character education into regular courses. By Oh Jong-taek

YANGPYEONG, Gyeonggi - Amid controversy over a spate of video clips exposing teenagers’ misdemeanors including bullying classmates and abusing the elderly, the importance of teaching character education has come to light.

Still, many schools find it hard to instill enough of the extracurricular courses designed to grow students into good, moral people while at the same time academically preparing them for the dreaded national college entrance exam.

Yangseo High School in Yangpyeong County, Gyeonggi, however, navigates its way through by infusing good character traits into regular academic courses.

Unlike a typical physics class filled with esoteric equations, the science lecture at Yangseo is more story-telling than a drill.

A picture of English scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and a display board detailing his life are placed on the blackboard.

“Faraday received little formal education because of his poor background, but he never gave up,” said Cho Dong-min, a physics teacher of the school.

“He educated himself by reading books on a wide range of scientific subjects and shaped his own future, beating the odds stacked against him,” said Cho.

“If you persevere and turn disadvantages into opportunities to get better, you will become a successful and respected figure like Faraday one day,” the teacher noted.

He then moved on to explain how the prominent physicist introduced Faraday’s law of induction, one of his most significant contributions to the field of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

Faraday’s law of induction is a basic principal of electromagnetism that predicts how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce an electromotive force.

Although the notion sounds complicated for high schoolers, Cho’s way of inviting students into one’s life story proved engaging and effective to explore an intricate science principal.

“I feel as though I watched a movie,” said Son Ji-hoon, 17-year-old male student who took Cho’s course.

“The concept of the difficult science rule sounds a lot easier after learning about his life.”

In the arts class for first graders, students were asked to make a sculpture using erasers that symbolized their friends.

Yoo So-jeong, 16, presented her work in the form of a shoe.

“This is an odd shoe of mine. I didn’t like it at first, but I kind of feel attached to it now over time because it has a lot of good points,” the female student said.

“Like this shoe, my friend Jang Won-yi has lots of good traits. Of all things, he is really considerate and thoughtful.”

Conversely, Jang brought up his sculpture that he says reminded him of Yoo: a monkey.

“A monkey always keeps its distance from other groups, but the animal develops a strong solidarity in its own groups,” said the 16-year-old boy.

“So-jeong looks a little cold and grumpy but, actually, she is really warm-hearted and takes care of others once we become close to each other,” he said, adding that the class gave him an opportunity to reflect on her good traits.

The school is now known for its emphasis on character development that helps students cultivate themselves in moral and social areas. The briefing session on its admission requirement attracted 3,083 parents and students, a three-fold increase compared to last year.

Up until 2001, however, Yangseo High School was not as popular because the school is located in a rural town. Ever since Principal Kwon Jin-soo took charge, he has spearheaded a wide range of reform measures to inject the core principles so students can develop socially and ethically, as well as academically.

“When I first came to this school in 2003, I felt we are losing ground,” said the 61-year-old principal.

“The entry scores of applicants had become lower and lower, and we sometimes had less students registered than needed,” he said.

“School staff talked and had meetings time and again to find a way out of the decline. What we came up with was focusing on character-building education to inject the element into everyday education,” he said.

A team of teachers took on the task of devising a curriculum with the new focus. And the school has held a demonstration class every semester and shared feedback with each other.

“Students are really passionate about what they are doing,” said Jung Hyun-hee, a 42-year-old math teacher.”

The school members also emphasize that encouraging teenagers to support each other in academic performance is an effective way for them to develop both socially and academically.

“While teaching and learning from one another, I feel I become more of a social being,” said Lee Jong-seok, 17, who helps his peers catch up with the class and vice versa.

The high school says that character education is not a cure-all, but it does expect to see reduced violence, fewer discipline referrals and higher academic performance through education programs teaching problem solving skills and thinking through long-term and short-term consequences of actions.

By Yoon Suk-man [ejpark@joongang.co.kr]

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