## South Korean Education Reforms

  
  
This year, I went practicum and it took about a month. The time was short but impactful enough for me to find problems of education in South Korea that need to be fixed. To begin with, current education policy of Korea is based on the 2015 Revised National Curriculum(1). This revised curriculum is overly complicated and evokes two main problems. For a start, the curriculum has too many specific subjects; schools have a superfluity of class subjects, while rooms and materials for the class are in shortage. The other matter is that teachers get numerous jobs assigned which are not related to teaching. To remedy these problems, I suggest changing the homeroom system to non-homeroom and hiring more teachers with a division of labor. By these two ways, the students will learn with rich materials, including the individual classrooms for each subject, while the teachers finally will focus on teaching.  
  
Before 2015 revision, 10th-grade students had ten compulsory subjects and ten elective courses(2), but now the division of subjects got more complex. Under one subject, for example, Korean has seven additional courses(3). Since adolescents get to choose their class course by their own decision, it is hard to predict the number of subjects that school shall provie for each semester. Thus, preparing enough materials and rooms in short time, like winter vacation, is almost impossible. This is because Korean schools have homeroom system and not many subject-specialized rooms for education. To wrap up, physical preparation of the school is a mess.  
  
The joke I said the most during and after the practicum was "Teachers do their 365 different works first and then teach kids when they have time left". The meaning of this gag is that the teachers have too many works to do that they have no time to teach. For instance, my mentor teacher had to do administrative work, teach the unofficial afterschool lesson, direct English-related contests, take care of her homeroom students, and then teach her lesson. Next year, due to the revised curriculum, she gets more subjects to teach with tasks standing in line, waiting for her. One teacher serves too many works, even though they are not directly related to teaching.  
  
To compensate for the first defect, I acclaim to abolish the homeroom system. When students stay in homeroom and teachers move from class to class, the teacher has to bring all the materials to the class. However, there is a realistic limit to bring every materials needed. If the students move around for each subject's classroom, the school and the teacher would be easier to prepare the materials and make the environment in each classroom. Much less, since freshmen population is decreasing, the number of homerooms will too. Instead of pouring money to sustain empty homerooms, developing subject rooms will be more beneficial to students.  
  
Further, school needs to hire more teachers, not just for teaching subjects, but for different types of work. The task of teachers must be separated by different sorts and the works that are not related to teaching should be assigned to the school staffs. In other words, school needs to hire each teacher for student care, school event administration, and teaching subjects. Recruiting teachers for each of the work type will raise specialty and the school will be ran successfully.  
  
As a final point, the 2015 Revised National Curriculum of Korea is extremely complicated that it is necessary for the school to resolve its side effects. Right now, the school system and materials cannot fully cover what the students need. Moreover, far away from teaching, the teachers drive themselves relentlessly because of non-teaching tasks. The solutions to these problems are simple. The school should apply a new classroom system that makes the students move and hire different kinds of teachers to separate work burden. Consequently, the classroom for each subject filled with various materials will facilitate the students' education and the teachers inside each room will not be interrupted by any other works, thus be pleased to teach adolescents. The goal of Korean education is to raise kids into fine educated people and this goal will be achieved when the school and the teacher are ready for the latest curriculum.  
  
(1) english.moe.go.kr/sub/info.do?m=040101&s=english  
(2) wenr.wes.org/2013/06/wenr-june-2013-an-overview-of-education-in-south-korea  
(3) Proclamation+of+the+Ministry+of+Education%2529.pdf