By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
The next administration will help reduce the ``separation'' of parents for the sake of English-language education for their children by implementing a program enabling students to learn English in Korea.
``The government will have to be accountable for the side effects of current English education methods. Fathers stay in Korea and make money while mothers take their children to schools in the United States and other English-speaking countries. This sad situation should be eliminated,'' said Lee Kyung-sook, chairwoman of the presidential transition committee, in a meeting with staff members Friday.
She said the next government will not sit idly for the so-called ``goose'' or ``penguin'' fathers, who remain in Korea to earn money to pay for tuition and the cost of living for their children and wives overseas.
``Penguin fathers'' are those who haven't enough money to visit their family abroad anytime.
The comments came as a reaction to parents who worry over costly private English-language tutoring for their children to help cope with non-language classes to be taught in English.
President-elect Lee Myung-bak said his government will work out measures to reinforce foreign language education in schools to enable ordinary high school graduates to speak English properly.
Meeting with education officials at the Lotte Hotel in central Seoul, he said the incoming government's policy goals are primarily aimed at normalizing school education to reduce private spending on out-of-school education and English-language study abroad.
Korean teachers of English are also uncertain of their future as many will be forced to conduct classes entirely in English in two years time. Private institutes see the transition committee's new English education plan as a golden opportunity to expand business.
``Many Koreans with doctorates don't even express their scholastic opinion freely due to their lack of proficiency in English,'' the transition team chief said. ``So we chose the drastic change in the English education system to get people to communicate in English once they graduate from high school.''
Though there are hurdles in investing in English education, the next government will devise a system in which Koreans will be good at English through ``compulsory education'' from elementary to high school, she said. She is to return to Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul as its president after the inauguration of President-elect Lee Myung-bak on Feb. 25.
The chairwoman said concrete plans for new English education will be unveiled in early February after a public hearing on Jan. 30.
High schools across the nation will be required to teach selected subjects in English from 2010, officials of the transition committee say.
English classes must also be conducted exclusively in the language beginning that year.
English-language classes will be introduced in model schools in rural areas this year, a measure that is expected to reduce the English education gap between rural and urban areas.
The program will then be adopted at public boarding high schools and autonomous private high schools, and will be expanded later to ordinary schools, officials said.