A big bang is needed for our education system

Without holistic education, our society will be doomed.

Yeom Jae-hoThe author, a former president of Korea University, is the president of Taejae University. In the 1970s, less than 20 percent of Koreans entered college. During the hard times, people who graduated from prestigious universities were able to get decent jobs at large companies. Some became leaders of society. Parents sold their farmland and cattle to send their children to college. Universities were called “cow bone towers,” instead of “ivory towers,” in Korea at that time.

To get admitted to top colleges, students had to take multiple choice exams to ensure fairness and efficiency. The objective tests had only one answer. A question in a middle school admissions exam in 1964 was “What can replace malt when you make yeot [a traditional Korean confectionery]?” The correct answer was “diastase.” But parents protested that radish juice also can replace diastase to make yeot and a student who applied for the prestigious Gyeonggi Middle School filed a lawsuit against the principal of the school. After a court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, many students who chose the answer could be saved. After the fiasco, the vice education minister and the Seoul education superintendent resigned. The situation is no different today. The whole country becomes noisy if a question in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has two correct answers.

The first baby boomers born between 1955 and 1963 numbered 7.28 million while the second baby boomers born in the following decade numbered 9.54 million. The two groups, making up nearly one-third of the entire population, are the mainstream of our society. They experienced an intensely competitive society where they were graded solely based multiple choice exams administered by the state.

Since the standardization of middle and high schools in the 1970s, students’ college admissions have relied on one state-administered test. If students are luckily admitted to top universities, they can enjoy social recognition and strong networks for the rest of their life. But unfortunately, those who failed to get admitted to those universities easily fall into the trap of “attribution” in social psychology.

In the industrialization period marked by mass production, college admissions carried great significance as a college diploma ensured a path to success. But in the 21st century, the advances in computerization and artificial intelligence (AI) enable the production of customized products — and the service industry has replaced the manufacturing industry as the mainstream. As the life expectancy dramatically rose, the CSAT scores from the exam taken at the age of 20 cannot determine people’s fate. The age of competition to find only one answer, as in the state-administered exam for college admissions, has gone.

The practice of companies seeking profits through heated competitions is changing quickly toward the direction of respecting such values as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. The corporate sector has found that its selfish pursuit of interests cannot guarantee its long-term growth and survival.

To move toward co-existence, respect for diversity is very important. Professor Peter Petersen at the University of Jena, Germany, conducted an experimental test for primary school students in 1923. He formed classes with students of different ages and characters in a school and educated them through converged classes, strengthened student autonomy, active debates and group activities. The professor trained them to enhance social interactions by bolstering play and sports. Some of the basic principles of the program included respect for the unique characteristics of others and a decent treatment of peers to help build a fair, peaceful and constructive society. Schools must serve as a venue to promote freedom, cooperation and care for one another.

Lawmakers in the National Assembly and athletes in the Paris Olympics are drastically different. While Olympians humbly accept the results of their competitions and even extend congratulations to the winners to show sportsmanship, lawmakers are engrossed in waging political battles against opponents for the interests of their party, not the country. They just brush off the noble values of compromise and concession. Even ordinary citizens don’t behave like them.

We must end the sad legacy of trying to find only one answer to questions. Such answers can be found more easily by AI and digital textbooks. Instead, we must focus on educating our future generations through the enhancement of their integrity and the respect for others, as seen in the Jena project. Without holistic education, our society will be doomed.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng daily staff.