Private Tutoring In Korea

Did these people, like, “study”?

Private tutoring in Korea is a deep-rooted problem since many people believe that it increases the gap between the poor and the rich. Ministry of Education has initiated various policies to eradicate private tutoring industry in Korea: it extended school hours, disallowed students to add competition or Olympiad contest results into their application for college, and even set the time curfew for private institutions to operate. A ministry official stated that the policies had been successful in reducing private tutoring spending by 30%. Its policy discouraged students to take advanced courses provided by various institutions and further made students feel apathetic to upcoming competitions. Proponents for such

Moreover, he accentuated that “Histories make men wise; poetry witty; mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic rhetoric able to contend.” In his words, he recognized the importance of various studies; each study, mentioned by Bacon, has its own part in men’s psychology and one without another will never make a full man. Criticizing those who abhorred studies, he classified people into various types as “Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them;” “Crafty men”, those who are only specialized in certain subject and believe their knowledge is perfect at the status quo, are likely to deny the necessity of study, an activity of learning various subjects and contents through various sources. Bacon, in his essay, Of Studies, simply disregarded them and went on asserting that each mental defect has its own remedy such as “if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study

Because I am benefiting from such system, it would be strange for me to oppose to it. Nonetheless, it is evidently true that the problem of private tutoring in Korea will not be cured by simply depriving students of receiving it. As Francis Bacon said in his Of Studies, “if a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics”, private institutions allow students to amend and supplement what they lack. Currently, schools are insufficient for providing students with additional classes or materials. I only make a concession that private tutoring is excessive in Korea; however, without any supplementary system to back up the hole, like the sarcastic attitude of Johnson, I only wonder whether the education policy makers are truly people who are “educated”. If they acknowledged the value that private tutoring contains and were aware of the balm-like effect it has to students, they would not simply resort to eliminating an inherently beneficial but superficially problematic