By Daniele Iannarone
For a year from mid-2017 to mid-2018, I embarked on an adventure that would forever shape the way that I think. I moved to Seoul, South Korea, to teach English at a private language academy, called hagwon. Needless to say, I was quite excited about the experience, and overall, I had an incredible year in Korea, filled with unforgettable memories and cherished friendships.
Unfortunately, what I was not prepared for when I moved to Korea was the cultural shock when it came to education, and how these hagwon owners treated education as though it was a for-profit business venture, as opposed to an educational institution that prioritizes the needs of the students.
For context, Korean students aged 5-17 attend hagwons, private after-school academies, where they build upon the information taught in school in order to get ahead. Hagwons exist for almost every subject: English, Mandarin, science, math, music, and even gym. The average Korean student might attend anywhere from 5-10 hagwons per week.
According to J.M. Beach’s book Children Dying Inside: A Critical Analysis of Education in South Korea (2011), “insecure people all across the world feel immense pressure to gain increased amounts of education in order to hold onto middle-class social status, let alone to seek increased economic mobility. Nowhere is this pressure felt more than in South Korea” (p. 5). Essentially, South Korea was very poor following the Korean War in the 1950s, and they rebuilt thanks to hard work and education. Education was seen as the key to avoid falling back into poverty, hence the rise in popularity of hagwons (p. 15).
The situation has become so extreme that, in order to get into one of the country’s three prestigious universities, Korean students need to sit a CSAT exam that is said to be extremely difficult. Just the English section of this exam is so hard that it is said to give even highly educated English speakers a hard time. You can find some examples of questions asked in the English section of the exam HERE.
Over the years, hagwons became so popular that many saw it as a legitimate opportunity to make a significant profit (Beach, 2011, p. 17). Hagwons are quite expensive, yet many of them operate like businesses instead of education centres. According to Beach, “Business owners with suspect educational credentials seem content to hire foreign staff with equally suspect educational credentials [in a service] designed more to generate fast profit rather than quality education” (p. 18). Teachers are merely required to hold a Bachelor’s degree in any field and be from an English-speaking country to be hired.
As Beach (2011) writes, it is not uncommon for teachers to be treated as figureheads and to conduct classes like robots, merely repeating words and sticking to a strict curriculum planned out by the hagwon, such as was the case for him with his employer, KEPA (p. 25). This type of educational model, he explains, “limits English expression and critical thinking” (p. 22). This model reflects poorly on mental health, with high rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide (p. 38).
The Korean hagwon system, therefore, ties in perfectly to the idea presented by Kingsley Bolton in his article “World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition” (2018), in which he explains that a common issue with the model of English being a sort of lingua franca for the world can serve as somewhat of a disservice to the practice of language teaching, and instead perpetuate capitalist ideologies (p. 8). He writes that “‘global English’ was a ‘capitalist neo-imperial language that serves the interests of the corporate world and the governments that it influences’” (Bolton, p. 8).
Which brings me to discuss my experience in Korea. While my personal life was very enjoyable, my hagwon, which was small and privately owned, certainly prioritized profits over the well-being of students. Teachers were instructed to give large amounts of homework, and we even inflated grades to make it appear to parents that their children were improving. Management frequently tried to take advantage of staff by trying to force us to work on our days off and finding ways to cut our pay. While I would consider myself as having been moderately qualified for the position, and certainly passionate about teaching, some of my colleagues were certainly not competent enough to teach adequately. Students were studying for hours per day, and the older, CSAT-aged students were incredibly sleep-deprived. It was clear that mental health was never a priority; not for management, nor for parents. Parents paid steep prices for their children’s education, yet management would often pack classrooms and operate on a low budget, increasing personal profits.
While, generally, class materials were provided to teachers by management, we were free to apply our own teaching style in the classroom, which was a relief and allowed me to get the students to interact more instead of operating like robots. With this said, ultimately, the main factor that led me not to renew my contract at the end of the year was seeing the mental health of the students suffering. I could not live with myself knowing I was a pawn in this torturous “educational” machine.
References:
Beach, J. M. (2011). Children Dying Inside: A Critical Analysis of Education in South Korea. Retrieved October 31, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216830514_Children_Dying_Inside_A_Critical_Analysis_of_Education_in_South_Korea
Bolton, K. (2018). World Englishes and Second Language Acquisition. World Englishes, 37, 5–18. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/weng.12299
Park, S. (2018, November 17). Check your English ability with ‘notorious’ Korean college entrance exam. The Korea Times. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/11/177_258803.html#:~:text=The%20English%20test%20of%20Korea’s,put%20on%20test%20takers’%20desks.
