New superintendents, gov’t agree sometimes

Home > >

print dictionary print

New superintendents, gov’t agree sometimes

One of the most common pledges made by the new liberal superintendents nationwide who swept the June 4 polls is that public education will be expanded to include early childhood education and that the number of public kindergartens and day-care centers will increase.

Jo Hee-yeon, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education’s incoming superintendent, promised to build 100 public kindergartens and give priority to children from low-income families, while Kim Seok-joon, the new superintendent in Busan, pledged to increase kindergartens attached to public elementary schools.

If those promises sound familiar, it’s because President Park Geun-hye also made similar pledges during her presidential campaign. The current administration is trying to provide subsidies for child care for newborns to 2-year-olds; expand the common educational and child-care system to include 3- and 4-year-olds; and build more national and public day-care centers.

Some are worried about possible conflicts between the conservative government and liberal educational offices over the issues of whether the government should designate history textbooks and whether the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, also known as JeonGyoJo, should be classified as an illegal group.

But despite ideological differences, the Park administration and incoming liberal superintendents have both suggested pledges with similar purposes and means, particularly when it comes to early childhood education.

“Both the government and liberal superintendents have a common educational agenda, such as to reinforce educational welfare and to reform the current curriculum, which is focused on entrance exams,” said Kim Kyung-hwoi, the dean of the College of Education at Sungshin Women’s University. “They can create a synergy effect once they try to communicate and cooperate with each other.”

The Park government has focused on educational welfare, such as providing free education and halving university tuition fees. And during their campaigns, the newly elected liberal superintendents also insisted that schools should pay for all necessary class materials.

One of the flagship policies of the current government is providing a semester to middle school students in which they can focus on finding their future career path.

While the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association, an educational group with a conservative inclination, did not agree with the idea, liberal educational groups such as JeonGyoJo supported the policy. “We agree that schools should help students find their talents and aptitudes,” said Ha Byeong-su, the spokesman for JeonGyoJo. “But we still demand that the Ministry of Education not promote the project unilaterally.”

Some educational policies touted by the Park administration have even strayed from the ideas promoted by previous conservative governments.

The Lee Myung-bak administration, for example, attempted to diversify high schools by building self-governing private high schools.

But the Park administration, on the contrary, is strengthening inspections on those elite schools as well as special-purpose high schools. The current government has also prohibited educators from teaching material beyond the current classroom curriculum, a move that drew positive responses from liberal education groups - and even more so because the bill was advocated by a conservative president.

“Both the conservatives and liberals stay critical of the problems derived from public education and admit that educational infrastructure needs to be reformed,” said Sung Ki-sun, a professor at the Catholic University of Korea, regarding the similar policies suggested by the government and liberal superintendents. “They are just expressing the same idea with different words and projecting different perspectives. Also, there should be a clear division of work. The government should suggest consistent educational policy, while local education offices adjust it to the characters of each of their jurisdiction.”

But despite headway in some areas, educational dogma between the two sides is, for the most part, still at odds.

Chung Jae-young, an education professor at the Ewha Womans University, said that for results, cooperation among liberal and conservative camps was necessary.

“The reason superintendent candidates are not nominated by political parties is because superintendents must draw up policies from the student’s perspective without ideological inclination,” he said. “The government and education offices should keep that in mind and cooperate with each other.”

BY CHUN IN-SUNG [bongmoon@joongang.co.kr]



Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)