The curriculum is itself an ongoing complicated conversation. (Pinar 2004, p. 187)
Policymakers and planners should not take tutoring as only a negative phenomenon a sort of weed which invades a tidy garden. Rather they should ask why parents are willing to invest considerable sums of money to supplement the schooling received from the mainstream. (Bray 2009)
Korea is well known internationally for its excellence in education: the high academic achievements of its students, Korean parentsâ enthusiasm for their childrenâs education, its teachersâ high levels of commitment, and so on. Of these, Korean studentsâ notable levels of academic achievement in international tests such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are often cited as evidence that Korea is a model of public schooling and teaching. Indeed, Koreans are proud of how these TIMMS and PISA scores have garnered foreign recognition for the quality of Korean schooling.
According to PISA results in 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012, Korea has consistently ranked in the top four nations for its studentsâ math, reading, and science abilities. The latest PISA results (2012) also reveal that Korean students rank first in math, first and second in reading, and second, third, and fourth in science among 34 OECD countries; and third through fifth in math and reading, and fifth through eighth in science among all 65 participating countries, including OECD countries. Similarly, the TIMSS results document Korean secondary school studentsâ high academic achievements in math and science. According to these results, the math performance of grade eight Korean students charted a continuous upward trajectory from 1995 to 2011. In terms of math performance on the TIMSS, Korea ranked third in 1995, second in 1999, 2003, and 2007, and first in the latest (2011) TIMSS test. And in the TIMSS test for science, Koreaâs students have continuously proven their prowess, ranking fourth in 1995, fifth in 1999, third in 2003, fourth in 2007, and third in 2011. Similarly, Korean elementary school students, who have participated in every TIMSS test since they began in 1995, were recognized in the 2011 TIMSS for their exemplary achievements; as were secondary school students in math and science, where they ranked first in science and second in math among their peers in all participating countries.
Because of these results, leaders aspiring to reform their own countriesâ education systems often refer to these measures of Koreaâs academic excellence. President Barack Obama, for example, has praised the Korean education system every time he has delivered a State of the Union address, and the US government has insisted on using the Korean system to create benchmarks for the United States. Obama lavished high praise on Korea for how its teachersâ high qualifications and parentsâ âeducation feverâ have led to studentsâ academic achievements; in fact, he expressed envy of the Korean education system. UNESCO too has regarded the Korean education system as one of the most successful in the world; and in its review of education systems globally, it has favorably assessed Korean teachers, education levels, salary structures, and educational equity. This worldwide interest in Korean educational culture and its success led one American school, the Democracy Preparatory Public Charter School in Harlem, to emulate Koreaâs educational culture as a way of transforming itself from the lowest performing school in New York City to the highest, according to its studentsâ performance.
However, despite the frequent high praise of Korean education outside of Korea, little international scholarly analysis or discussion exists on the topic of how that country has achieved these educational results. In their simplistic conclusions that these outcomes are the product of rigorous quality control in Koreaâs public school system, foreign politicians and the mass media may have focused excessively on such statistical results as TIMMS scores. In fact, Korean studentsâ higher academic achievement may derive at least in part from other causes.
This book is the first academic effort in an international context to search beyond the school system for answers to what makes Korean students achieve higher scores than any other students in the world. Other foreign scholars have noted that Koreaâs schooling may be at least a major explanation for its studentsâ test scores. However, to complete the picture, cultural, social, and economic influences on these results should also be considered.
In examining causes outside of schooling effects, I focus on the impact of hakwon education on academic results. Like public school, hakwon education is a major part of Korean studentsâ educational lives: even lay people in Korea tend to attribute the prowess of Korean students to their hakwon education rather than to public schooling. In fact, Korean students and parents have recently tended to prefer hakwon education to the public school system, which is often criticized within Korea. Thus, to discuss Korean education without considering the effects of hakwon education on studentsâ academic accomplishments would be to present a partial or erroneous explanation of this phenomenon.
From the Chinese character signifying âplace for study,â hakwon is a kind of private tutoring system (PTS) that provides students with supplementary, after-school education. In relation to this education, Professor Mark Bray (1999, 2010) introduced hakwon education as a form of shadow education in his famous booklet Confronting Shadow Education, and emphasized that shadow education is gaining popularity around the world and has become common in Far Eastern countries (South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Singapore) where, compared to public schooling, it enjoys as much or more favor. Bray also devoted considerable space to discussing how common PTS is in Korea. While a precise definition of âhakwonâ is difficult at this point since the concept and the practices of PTS vary, education and curriculum scholars from different countries may at some point arrive at a consensus about how best to define that term. In the meantime, I use âhakwonâ to signify a private educational institute where Korean students study after school to supplement or advance their learning. Funded by studentsâ families and privately owned, hakwons are both educational and commercial enterprises. Many hakwons have, in fact, grown into widespread franchises or companies: like Coca-Cola or McDonaldâs, DaeSung, MegaStudy, Teacher Yun for English, and Top Secret are familiar brands in Korea.
While âhakwonâ may be an unfamiliar term to many foreign scholars and politicians, for Korean parents and students talking about education, the relationship between hakwon and hakkyo (public school) education is a central concern. For most Korean students, attending hakwons is an indispensable component of academic life before college. This position will be supported in Chaps. 4, 5 and 6 by a qualitative representation of Korean studentsâ attendance at hakwons from elementary school through high school.
In Korea, examinations and competition at school are of paramount importance. The ability of hakwon education to help students to improve their performance on the formal entrance examinations for high school and college entrance, as well as in particular subjects, therefore explains the variety of available hakwon courses and levels. Among the many approaches hakwons take, the format of small groups of students studying together at the same level is one successful means by which they encourage students to enroll: hakwon classes typically consist of 10â15 students, compared to school classes of 30â40 students; and students may join hakwon classes that match their level at any point during the year.
Hakwon Education in the Korean Context
To provide a basic understanding of the effects and influences of hakwon education, I provide statistical data published by two reliable Korean agencies. However, I point out to readers that this statistical information may be open to question because some Korean families and students may have responded to the related questionnaires inaccurately: during the 1980s and 1990s, the Korean government regarded PTS and hakwon education as illegal, so most families still tend not to talk about details of their childrenâs participation in hakwon education (the hakwons they attend, when they attend, what the tuition fees are), or they under-represent what they pay and how often their children go to hakwon classes. In particular, they tend not want to specify what they pay in tuition, especially if they perceive this cost as being high.
The most broad-based report on Korean studentsâ participation in hakwon education/PTS derives from a survey conducted by Statistics Korea, âThe Amount of Educational Expenditure for âhakwonâ (2012).â According to this survey, in 2012 about 69.4% of Korean students, approximately seven million children, engaged in hakwon education of some sort. Within this group, 80.9% of elementary students, 70.6% middle school students, and 50.7% of high school students attended hakwons.
According to this trend, and given the likelihood that parents underreport their spending on hakwon and other private education, conservatively estimates that of the total current annual expenditure of 1.9 billion US dollars on hakwon and other PTS education (one-on-one tutoring, as well as home schooling guided by commercially oriented companies), hakwon payments for elementary, middle, and high school students total about 77 million, 61 million, and 51 million US dollars respectively. Hyundai Research Instituteâs estimate of annual hakwon expenses for public school children is considerably higher, at least 1.5 billion US dollars and perhaps as much as 3.4 billion US dollars, one and a half times the total public-education budget (Kim 2010a). In Korea, the total expenditure for private tutoring is 24 billion dollars, 2.8% of the GDP (Kim and Lee 2010, p. 3). Globally, the size of this national expenditure is unique, surpassing even Japanâs comparable expenditure.
Economically significant as this statistic is, the more serious problem related to hakwon education is that most Korean families regard it not as one form of supplementary PTS, as Bray defined hakwon schooling, but as an indispensable component of their childrenâs education. Korean students take it for granted that throughout their public school years, every day or every other day they will spend several hours at their hakwons. For many, hakwons are simply their second schools; for some, they are their most important schools, making âI am going to hakwon nowâ just as common a statement as âI am going to school now.â While parents of elementary students hear that sentence in the early afternoon, those whose children are in middle school or their first years of high school hear it in the late afternoon or early evening; and those of senior high school students may hear it at 10 or 11 p.m. Not surprisingly, parents are often to be found waiting outside hakwons to bring their children home in the dark, or staying up to greet them when they return late at night.
The importance of hakwons directly influences the lives of Korean parents, especially of mothers, who traditionally oversee childrenâs education. They try to collect reliable information about good hakwons, talking to fellow parents or comparing the websites of famous hakwons. The choice of a hakwon becomes more important as children advance in school. Koreans even have a saying that finding the best hakwon for her child is a motherâs way to show her ability and affection as a parent.
Given this social pressure in favor of hakwon education, most mothers gladly anticipate that they will spend much of their incomes on hakwon classes throughout the years their children are in public school. Although some families are less able than others to afford the tuition, the majority of mothers think that even though it may entail some economic hardship, they should find money every month for hakwon fees, and so they may take on additional work or borrow money. Of course this monthly expenditure increases with the number of classes their children take, the amount of personal attention their children receive there, and the reputation of the instructor or the hakwon; hakwon expenses thus can easily compete with mortgage and car-payment costs. Koreans wryly say that hakwon costs are such that if you have two children, you cannot think of saving money for the future. In fact, this long-term financial burden has indeed resulted in social problems: some Korean families do not have enough money for other purposes, most importantly for the parentsâ retirement.
This economic burden is particularly heavy for families whose children are in their last three years of academic (rather than vocational) high school. All academic-stream and some vocational-stream high school seniors write a November college-entrance exam. In preparation, they must master all of their courses in their second year of high school so that they can spend their final year memorizing and reviewing everything they have learned. Throughout these three years, students may supplement their public school education with hakwon classes in a range of subject areas, including the Korean language, mathematics, and English (this topic will be explored i...