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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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 Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject: Why the Korean gov't hates hagwons, and once shut them down |
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http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4679
I felt this link merits its own thread. Please read it, and learn some history about hagwons in Korea. It's interesting. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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It's a good summary of things up to May 2000.
It sheds light on the phobia Koreans have about fake degrees. If you have spent your childhood locked into after school hakwons, spent mega-millions of Won to get educated, gone through exam hell to get into the best possible university, and then find out other people who faked their degrees are making a better living than you, you have a right to be peeved.
I think of it in terms of me studying for a test in college and then someone cheating and getting a better score and a scholarship. |
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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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A quote from the article:
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In a country where education is so highly valued, it was inevitable that the laws against kwawoe would be about as effective as 55-mph speed limits on American highways. The new relaxation of the laws has prompted some rethinking. "The fear is that some families may choose to pull their kids out of the public education system altogether," D. Peter Kim, a reporter with the Korea-based Yonhap News Agency told me, "and just hire tutors to prepare them for college, given the many problems of the public education system. Thus the very legitimacy of Korean public education may fall into question."
Many parents say they would be willing to pay for better public education, but instead they vote with their checkbooks in the private market. "I would pay higher taxes if the government comes up with ways to improve public education," says Chin Sun-Mi, who sent her 15-year-old daughter to England to study. "It costs just as much to put them through hagwon and arrange private lessons, and there is much less psychological stress on the child." |
This also shows why I've been saying that the government is going hard after illegal degrees in the hagwons, but you haven't heard a peep about them going after people in the private school industry, or university professors lately (the uni profs caught were by not due to gov't witch-hunts -- they were uncovered by other means).
They need to check private school (the ones that are privately-owned public schools) and universities, but they aren't doing it. They're probably afraid to do it. As this article discusses, they are already worried enough over the lack of confidence on the public schools and Korean unis. |
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Typhoon
Joined: 29 May 2007
Location: Daejeon
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 4:40 am Post subject: |
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I got the impression that previous crackdowns focused more on in-house tutoring and "study rooms" (kwawoe) and not hagwons. The government has been fighting tutors for a long time, but that article is not about shutting down the hagwon system. It is about shutting down illegal tutoring (1-1) and small group study groups.
The government has been against tutoring for a long time, but hagwons have been, for the most part, allowed free reign. There was no shut down anytime from 1996 on any hagwon that I know of. I can't speak about before that time as I have little knowledge of what happened. The government has been pretty soft on hagwons due to the amount of kickbacks and "political contributions" hagwon associations make to government officials. |
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