Koreans and the love of learning

By Bernard Rowan

These days, Korean culture is progressing on many fronts. Cultural change is often difficult to analyze, but it occurs nonetheless.

One outstanding feature of Korean society and culture is the love of learning. Koreans value education. They respect attending and succeeding in school. They also respect leaders who are teachers and professors. Korea's advancement increasingly depends on an educated workforce.

Benchmarking data from the Center for International Education clearly shows Korea's love of learning. Over 94 percent of its adults have completed high school and over 42 percent have completed further or higher education; that metric is 63 percent for adults between the ages of 25-34. Korea ranks among the top countries in the entire world with the latter statistic and is the top performer among OECD countries. The reading, math and science statistics easily outpace those of the United States.

When I visited or lived in Korea, it wasn't hard to notice some differences between American and Korean education. I'm used to opening doors for my students. I'm used to proving myself to earn students' attention. I'm also used to a broader society that treats "academics" as failed practitioners or eggheads. America's practical, anti-royalist, and individualistic culture places business, military and technological achievement above all else.

Korea values business, technology and military achievement also, as well as other global mainstays. However, Korean society continues to decide leadership based on educational achievement as a basis for merit. Americans debate the "value of higher education," and citizens grow skeptical about the value of public education. These excuses for not investing in education form in too many minds with pedestrian notions about the educated lacking "real world knowledge".

South Koreans continue to achieve high literacy rates, high school and college graduation rates, and advanced degrees. By the way, these kinds of ''intellectual accomplishments" correlate with all manner of lessened social costs, dependency, and poverty.

Korean students respect their professors in bonds of learning that become friendships. It's fashionable and not mistaken to criticize neo-Confucian culture and its excesses. Korea's educational culture benefits from living examples of the Confucian values of respect and authority. Many Korean friendships through education have blessed me. One Korean mentor considers me his younger brother, as do several of my peers. Sympathy in combination with learning is a special and valuable mediation of humanity and learning. It exists as a more general possibility in Korean society.

Education literature abounds about stress mentoring, attending to more than ''subject matter expertise," and to act as a role model to coach students to press their limits and explore them. Korea's educational culture has practiced this for centuries.

Korean peers in junior-senior networks also elaborate these bonds. Korean students overseas or just in a different part of the country find and renew these friendships. Education peer networks create new role models and mentors.

However, some professors and teachers violate good practice or abuse their authority. Korean networks can be insular when they privilege particular people by affinity instead of merit.

But we need not treat outliers as the norm. Korea's educational culture also builds understanding of globalism. Korea stands between many other Asian partners: past enemies, past and present allies, past colonizers and imperial powers, trading partners, and receiving countries of Korean technology and know-how. Despite conflicts and historical ill-feeling, President Park is creating energy for a summit with China and Japan that typifies the secret to Korean success as an advanced society.

Korean universities, Korean companies, and Korean civic and political traditions borrow from other Asian cultures. Korea adapts and makes such practices its own. Other nations and societies balk at learning by imitation, but Korean history is full of this form of learning as a context for education.

There's plenty of work to do though. Korea's Ministry of Education needs reform to improve elementary and high school curricula. The national government should look into the national exam for ways to extend admissions to colleges and universities. Build more Korean colleges and universities, as well as technical institutes. Develop more training institutes for adult learners to earn high school diplomas and skills.

Immigrants to Korea receive too little workforce training and access; this is eventually more costly than people realize. Hagwon and private academies likely need stricter standards on their directors and staff. As many Koreans need to learn Chinese as they do English this century. Cramming and binge studying stress are anathema to learning; love of learning is not a love of testing or who ranks No.1 on a particular exam. President Park gives suitable attention to the value of creativity and the need to lessen stress on young learners.

Korea will continue to advance as it continues to stress education and the love of learning. Don't stop investing in and recognizing this central cultural value.

Bernard Rowan is assistant provost for curriculum and assessment, professor of political science and faculty athletics representative at Chicago State University, where he has served for 21 years. Write him at browan10@yahoo.com.