Korean Education Fever and Private Tutoring

Korean Education Fever and Private Tutoring

Education is one of the most important factor of determining someone's life. So, how to raise and educate their children is one of the major concerns for most parents. They want their children to grow healthily, receive a good education and lead a successful life. So they begin to pay attention to education of their children when they're young and try to give their children opportunity to study in a good education environment.
Though this phenomenon is common in the world, in case of Korea, this trend is so peculiar that we call it 'Korean educational fever'. Among lots of indicators of this phenomenon, the most remarkable thing is an investment in a private tutoring. According to the Bank of Korea, for example, private tutoring expenses amounted to 20.9 trillion won last year, up 4.3 percent from 2007. The tutoring expenditure per student reached 350,000 won in 2008, double the figure in 2000. This is equivalent to about 56% of the national budget on education.
Of course, this high education fever have contributed to Korean students' high academic achievements. As shown the PISA(Programme for international student assessment), Korean students' achievement in science, math and reading ranked at the 1st, 2nd, and 6th places among the 27 OECD countries in 2002.
But it also have brought some problems in relation with a private tutoring. High expenditure for private tutoring caused by the high education fever is a heavy burden for domestic economy. And the problem is not only about the 'money' thing. It affects students' attitude and recognition for learning. Because of a heavy private tutoring, they have weakness in self-directed learning capabilities and their engagement in classroom teaching tends to be low.
As one of the method for dealing with these problems, this paper examines the background of education fever in Korea from the aspect of society, history, and system of education.
Lee (2002) defines...