English madness

There's a fascinating frenzy about English education taking place in Korea these days. It's more complicated than just wanting to speak English well because it's the language of international business and science, although that's certainly part of it.

Another big part, though, is the university entrance system. Apparently, university entrance is decided entirely by the scores high school students receive on just one test. Nothing else counts--not class grades, admission essays, extracurricular interests, etc. Just the test. And one component of the test is English proficiency. However, it only measures listening and reading ability, not speaking and writing.

So, there are hagwons. These are also called cram schools or private English institutions (I always hear people say "institutions" and it makes me think of mental hospitals. I think it the word should be "institutes" which suggests higher learning. But then I think again and "institutions" may be more accurate after all, even if unintentionally so.)

So, parents who can afford it (and even those who can't) send their kids to these hagwons after the regular public school day ends. Something like 70% of Korean families do this, or hire private tutors to work with their kids at home. I read that it's not uncommon for families to spend 30% of their income on this.

The hagwon phenomenon is complicated. They represent the absolute bottom rung of teaching jobs. And they are private for-profit businesses run by businesspeople, not schools run by educators (yes, I have a bias, which I think is justified). So, it's a numbers thing--get as many students as possible, pay the teachers as little as possible (by hiring the least qualified), and rake in the parents' tuition money.

This all came to a head (though the issue is extremely far from being resolved) recently when hagwon owners were given the right (by some kind of government ordinance. I'm not sure of the details) to keep their institutes open 24 hours a day. Fortunately, that was considered too much studying, even by Korean parents. There were protests that it would harm teenagers' health, so the 24-hour rule was revoked.

As far as I can tell, these days parents send their kids to the institutes until 10 or 11pm. If the kids fall asleep in class the next afternoon, it's considered to be worth it because parents feel the evening English cramming lessons at the hagwons are prearing kids for THE EXAM better than their regular schools are. If the hagwons had been allowed to stay open 24-hours a day, I'm sure they would have had plenty of parents signing their kids up for the graveyard shift. These parents would probably have said that they hated to have to do it, but they had no choice. After all, if the hagwon's open then the neighbors might be sending their kid to the midnight class. And if the neighbor's kid is going, then our kid better be going too, or the other kid might get one more point than ours on THE EXAM.