Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea

CURRICULUM STUDIES WORLDWIDE SHADOW EDUCATION AND THE CURRICULUM AND CULTURE OF SCHOOLING IN SOUTH KOREA Young Chun Kim Curriculum Studies Worldwide Series Editor William F. Pinar University of British Columbia Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada Janet L. Miller Teachers College New York , New York , USA This series supports the internationalization of curriculum studies worldwide. At this historical moment, curriculum inquiry occurs within national borders. Like the founders of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, we do not envision a worldwide fi eld of curriculum studies mirroring the standardization the larger phenomenon of globalization threatens. In establishing this series, our com- mitment is to provide support for complicated conversation within and across national and regional borders regarding the content, context, and process of education, the organizational and intellectual center of which is the curriculum. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14948 Young Chun Kim Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea Young Chun Kim Chinju National University of Education Jinju City , Republic of Korea Curriculum Studies Worldwide ISBN 978-1-137-51323-6 ISBN 978-1-137-51324-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51324-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950460 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © F.G.I CO., LTD. / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York PREF ACE Curriculum studies was not a comfortable and pleasing science for my life’s work. It has become so, in particular, after I acquired a PhD in the USA and studied postmodern and postcolonial discourse in education. Reading Said, Spivak, and other great fi gures pushed me to choose a road which was different from that of my senior colleagues in curriculum studies in Korea. One day in the library of the College of Education, I asked myself, “Why am I sitting on the fl oor here in a strange foreign country? Why do I have to constantly read articles and books on US schooling and its theories?” I did not think that my future goal in Korea would be closely associated with such literature. More importantly, I did not like to think of US knowledge as the source of Korean answers and decided to stop this colonized way of thinking. Everything seemed clear and different from that day. I swore that I would become a scholar who studied Korean stories and schooling rather than US theories or knowledge and use them for answers for Korean education. I left the USA with these fi nal remarks to my doctoral dissertation committee members in answer to the question, “Young Chun, is there anything you want to say before we end this fi nal defense?”to Rather than teaching US curriculum theories of the great fi gures such as Michael Apple, William Pinar, and Elliot Eisner in Korea, I will write our own Korean stories on Korean schooling and use them for the Koreanization of curriculum studies. If I do succeed in the task, more scholars will take this postcolonial task more seriously, and our Korean curriculum studies will have more books, knowledge, and theories, unlike the past and even present situation.” Since then, whenever, I have felt that I am lost or far v vi PREFACE outside the mainstream trend of Korean curriculum studies scholars who are eager to accept US and Western curriculum theories and use them for their practical answers, I have tried to remember my determination that day in 1995. Since then, I have portrayed Korean scenes of schooling and classroom interactions as the major topics in my articles and books: Korean teachers’ professional development, stories of the failure of Korean curriculum revision reform policies at the school level, features of Korean elementary schooling and the culture of the hidden curriculum, and fi rst-year Korean novice teachers’ dilemmas and problems. Some of these articles and books were successful and nationally recognized by students of education. I am so happy to know that some books are used as reference books in under- graduate and graduate courses across Korea. Letters and e-mails from the readers of my books, even though I do not know them, have made me think that my decision was right and very satisfying, even though there have been no external rewards for my lonely academic journey. Doing fi eldwork for the last 20 years in Korea has shown me that, together with other Korean curriculum researchers, I was ignoring the importance of our practices and was not recognizing the big gap between theory and practice. From that perspective, to be able to study Korean schools and classrooms with qualitative research paradigms has been a valuable asset and grace for my research journey. Although in comparison with quantitative research, my research effort has been heavier and more diffi cult. However, what I have learned about Korean schooling is suf- fi ciently valuable and meaningful to make me forget all kinds of barriers and the labor of doing fi eldwork. More importantly, along with other qualitative researchers in the curriculum studies and educational research area, I have come to think that more practical and experiential research on Korean schooling and educational practices should be produced and dis- seminated as the basic data for Korean curriculum studies. It is ironic that no classroom research—such as Lives in classrooms (Jackson 1968) —was carried out until 1996, with my fi rst book on Korean classrooms (Kim 1997) published the following year. This book came out of my long observation of Korean schools based on my postcolonial identity. I tried to pose questions such as: “What kind of phenomena should be selected and researched as the best way to better understand and represent Korean schooling? What do we have in Korea that is not same as Western schooling? What is the most common and general interest of Korean educators, parents, and students? What kind PREFACE vii of research topics could be considered as postcolonial in studying Korean educational issues? What is a major concern among Korean people relating to their education and children?” And most importantly, I asked, “What distinguishes Korean students’ educational lives from those of students in Western nations?” As a result, I found that hakwon education, sometimes called “Shadow Education,” is one critical characteristic of Korean schooling and educational culture. It is everywhere in Korea and is part of Korean society. It is sometimes called a social evil and sometimes seen as another way to advance our child’s potentiality, which can hardly be taken care of by school teachers alone. In addition to the recurrent discussion on social media about hakwon education in Korea, my longtime fi eldwork in Korean schooling, grounded in participant observation and intensive interviewing, has enabled me to take the issue as my postcolonial topic. I have come to study the phenomenon as the one theme related to the questions above and to create a new research space: hakwon education as curriculum studies in Korea and elsewhere. As a result, I published the fi rst book on Korean elementary studentsu extra schooling outside public education: Rather Let Students Study in Hakwons. It drew a big social reaction from Korean parents and the mass media and was fi nally introduced to mainstream society in the Jungang Daily Newspaper in 2008. It portrayed various kinds of hakwon insti- tutes for elementary students and explained how they operate for each student’s academic purpose and level. It included six students’ autobiog- raphies about the use and role of hakwon education. The book’s approach was very different from the mainstream approach to hakwon education at the time as a social evil, and was the fi rst formal acknowledgement of its positive contribution to Korean children. The second book, Life of Korean high school students at hakwon , was published in 2012. It was supported by the POSCO (Pohang Iron & Steel Co.) Foundation to support the human and social values of Asian countries. My project pro- posal was based on the idea that hakwon education is accepted and used across the Far East and must be a local and cultural feature of Asian education. The book discussed the role of a comprehensive hakwon for high school students. It described students’ whole life in the hakwon and their educational experience during the three years before entering college.

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