[Letters] Not sold on after-school classes

Not sold on after-school classes
Regarding the April 20 editorial, “Let’s share the knowledge,” my opinion is that after-school programs at middle schools and high schools haven’t been so successful, and they even have caused other problems.

It is difficult to provide quality after-school classes. Teachers at middle schools and high schools are usually exhausted after they finish teaching regular classes. Therefore, if they teach after-school classes, the quality of these classes will suffer. Also, they won’t have enough time to prepare teaching materials for their regular classes. But if schools hire outside lecturers to solve this problem, it will cause another problem.

Outside lecturers will teach after-school classes as a part-time job, so if they want to quit teaching, there will be no means to stop them from doing that. That makes it difficult to ensure continuity of the programs.

Also, students will lose their free time in which to develop themselves into balanced individuals. At first, after-school programs were launched to develop students’ specialties. However, our society places much emphasis on academic achievement. Consequently, many students are joining programs on academic subjects rather than specialties, following their parents’ wishes. As a result, students are more deprived of time to enjoy their hobbies or develop special interests.

According to statistics, there is no sign that private education spending has decreased since after-school programs were expanded on a large scale.

The reason can be found outside of the education system. Korean parents are notable for their enthusiasm for their children’s education. Even when they immigrate to other countries, they hire tutors for their children. Even though their children join after-school programs, they want their children to go to cram schools if they can afford it.

Korean students are already under a lot of pressure to do well in regular classes at school and at cram schools. Therefore, it is better for the government not to expand these after-school programs. Instead, the government should focus on improving the quality of regular classes at school and use its budget for that purpose.

Park Choon-hee, Sprcar24@hanmail.net