Poor investors, they can't open a school fast enough in Songdo

Yes, let's everyone look to the UK for successful education models, ha. And that's what young learners in Korea need, more testing. Thanks for that, Simm.

And thanks to you, Kang, for promoting the privatization of public education. How very .. daring! You'll be an editor before you know it.

OECD ranks South Korea ahead of Japan in scientific literacy

The latest OECD International Student Assessment report is out. The report is published every three years, and this one focuses on "scientific literacy." Korean teachers may be relieved to find that their students rank ahead of Japan's, though Finland continues to dominate.

For those who like to give learners the equivalent of sports scores, the report can be found here (volume one is 390 pages).

Dear Cho Jeon-hyeock

UPDATE: Cho is a member of LMB's transition committee. Of course.

Christ, professor, you need a lot of words to say nothing at all. A complex issue requires a return to “basics”? How insightful.

First: Korean students continue to score at or near the top in OECD achievement rankings in reading, writing, and mathematics. The patient is anything but terminal. You should know this.

Second: Many countries have centralized, bureaucratic, top-down public education systems. South Korea is hardly aberrant in this regard. You should know this.

Third: Name one country that allows entirely independent, unregulated schools to operate. I mean countries with functioning states, not Somalia.

Fourth: Most OECD countries allow for some local and democratic oversight of schools, e.g. “school boards” with members elected from and by the public. You should know this, but your elitist worldview blinds you to its significance.

Fifth: You’re an education professor, obviously able to write in english. I challenge you to publish something in a peer-reviewed journal to justify your refreshing neoliberal approach to education reform in Korea.

I’m kidding with this last, of course. Serious academics would shred your “arguments." Best stick with The Korea Times - and keep those transfers from the Center for Free Enterprise’s stipend account coming!

Fucking weasel

"I will make a society in which poverty is not passed from generation to generation by ... creating two education systems. Specifically, wealthy families will have 100 more schools to choose from. To ensure that these systems are firmly divided, I will encourage universities to rank high schools. Teachers who resist will be evaluated into early retirement." So saith Lee Myung-bak.

And in the newsrooms of the nation, there was much rejoicing.

What's "Juche" in English?

KM Lawson at Frog in a Well, looking at a piece in the Chosun Ilbo by New Right intellectual Shin Ji-ho, notes

how easily the “New Right” can expose the hypocrisy and backwardness of the nationalism of Korea’s mainstream left, and champion, with apparent ease, the forces of tolerance, international cooperation, and cosmopolitan identities.

"English" obviously plays the leading role in the construction of "cosmopolitan" identities, and the NL Left wants nothing to do with it. (Never mind that "English" could help the movement make connections with communities of resistance elsewhere.) It's only response is to attack "English" in all its manifestations: the hagwons, the publishers, the foreigners who teach it.

This is a mistake, this refusal to engage with the discourses surrounding "English." People have invested enormous resources, financial and emotional, into Englishes. Desire, even when it is "manufactured," will not be challenged by denial, the absence of challenge.

NL intellectuals in the DLP need some new ideas, desperately. I think this is what 47% of the membership was in part telling them.

Recommendations

Education International sent quite a fierce letter to Roh this week, recommending that school management be more transparent, that the government lift limitations to collective bargaining, and that teachers be allowed to speak freely during election campaigns.

Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation recommends that the U.S. should:

Begin efforts to reach out to and win over the post-386 generation of South Korean voters who are more amenable to U.S. interests. Although not a yet a strong political power, this generation is a long-term "potential client" for the U.S.

Isn't it nice when folks make an effort to reach out?

Hankyoreh and KCTU draw attention to ILO report

The International Labor Organization (ILO) cited South Korea, along with Cambodia, Colombia, Philippines and Iran, as a country in which workers' right to assembly is not well guaranteed.

Great company that, countries where labour activists are daily threatened, beaten, tortured and disappeared. I wonder how many workers will be imprisoned, or killed on the streets of Seoul this summer.

Park Geun-hye vows to save public education - by killing it

It seems Park Geun-hye plans to dismantle public education in the country, so that "quality human capital" might be better produced - oh wait, she won't have to, since apparently it has already "collapsed."

She also says "deregulation" and the "rule of law" will allow Korea to prosper. Quite comfortable expressing nonsensical contradiction, is Park Geun-hye.

And about those tax cuts, Ms Park ...


The Korea Times won't provide an URL for the story, so here's most of it:

"Failed Public Education Undermines Economy"

By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter

Presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) has diagnosed that failed educational policy has undermined the economy.

Among others, she stressed that the next government should put top priority on public education.

``The collapse of public education and soaring household spending on private education are two core problems which should be addressed during the next administration,’’ the former GNP chairperson said.

Park claimed the poorly managed public education system has generated many social ills including a growing number of broken families.

Therefore effective programs for training quality human capital should be given primary importance as a key item on the national agenda.

Successful educational reform will pave the way for the prosperous economy and consequently job creation will follow, she said.

She pointed out that Koreans are estimated to spend some 31 trillion won per year on private education. English education takes the lion’s share of the spending.

Park, the eldest daughter of the late President Park Chung-hee, said her camp is reviewing various policy options to enable the government to support families to take free foreign language programs.

Park singled out tax cuts, deregulation and the rule of law as the three core elements that can revitalize the Korean economy.

She added these three elements will create jobs and improve welfare for low-income families.

Regulations hold the economy back, she said.

According to her, about 500 more regulations have been introduced during the incumbent Roh Moo-hyun administration.

Park promised to ease regulations, if elected president.

Korean teachers lodge complaint with the ILO

The KTU has submitted a complaint to the ILO. The ILO will ask the government to respond this month, but there will be no formal discussion of teachers' charges before November.

Calling on the KTU to support the academic and cultural boycott of Israel

Inspired by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Britain's National Union of Journalists and now the UCU, I am going to submit a motion to the KTU executive, that the union join the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. I realize it's a longshot ...