Education Fever' And English

By Author: Alex Armas
Total Articles: 74
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These days, a huge amount of money is being spent on 'English education' (yeongeokyoyuk) in South Korea every year. Children as young as five years as well as school-age students are studying English until late at night in tens of thousands of cramming schools (hagwori). A great number of children are being sent to foreign countries for the purpose of 'English education' and the number is increasing year by year.

This current English boom in South Korea is considered to have its roots in what Koreans they call 'education fever' (kyoyukyeol) or 'national obsession with the attainment of education' (Seth, 2002:9). 'This preoccupation with the pursuit of formal schooling,' according to Seth, 'was the product of the Replica Tag Heuer diffusion of traditional Confucian attitudes toward learning and status, new egalitarian ideas introduced from the West, and the complex, often contradictory ways in which new and old ideas and formulations interacted' (p. 6). As 'a way of achieving status and power' as well as 'a means of self-cultivation,' most ...
... Koreans agree, education in South Korea has been valued for centuries (Seth, 2002:9). In addition, modern egalitarian ideas from the West, along with the collapse of traditional social classes after the Japanese occupation in the early twentieth century has driven the country to suffer from new and more intense 'education fever.'

These days, owing to the collapse of the traditional class system, there is a belief that virtually any
Korean can advance himself through his own efforts. Education is seen as the most powerful means to achieve upward social mobility and economic prosperity, and many Korean parents believe that they can help their children succeed by emphasizing, and even imposing, education for their children. This current excessive pursuit of 'intense, all-or-nothing competition' in South Korea (Vitello, 2006) is similar to the efforts of the transgenerational reproduction' by the North American white middle class (Griffith & Smith, 2005:28). The Korean mothers in the education fever who have reached the middle class through education are also 'married, college-educated, suburban women with school-age children,' who are quite similar to American 'soccer moms' (Weisberg, 1996). A typical Korean 'soccer mom' can be defined - along with her American counterpart - as 'a well-heeled super-parent whose primary Omega Seamaster Replica Watches mission in life is to do too much for her children,' a definition Weisberg (1996) quotes from a South Carolina newspaper.

These Korean 'soccer moms' have produced a different kind of inequality by arranging extra teaching for their children outside school, and kwaoe, or 'private tutoring and out-of-school lessons,' is now widespread throughout South Korea. According to Seth (2002), kwaoe is the greatest single factor in the escalating price of schooling, placing a big financial burden on Korean families, and undermining the policy of egalitarian access to education (Seth, 2002:185). 'In ensuring the transmission of middle-class status to their children,' the new Korean middle-class parents, quite similar to the American middle-class parents, are inclined to 'rely on educational institutions that would secure the appropriate credentials' (Griffith & Smith, 2005:22). A recent newspaper article reported on what these Korean 'soccer moms' do for their children (J-Y. Kim, 2007), including paying one million won (nearly $1,000) a month to English-immersion schools where their 5- to 6-year-old children learn English from native speakers of English. When their children become elementary school students, they travel with their children to an English-speaking country for a couple of years. Crucially, the focus of these parental practices is on their children's 'educational entry into higher levels of schooling and prestigious institutions' (Seth, 2002:5).