Fulbright U.S. Education Center

I’m pleased to inform readers of this blog that the 1996 book I co-authored with Mel Gurtov and Robert R. Swartout, Jr., Korea’s Amazing Century:  From King’s to Satellites is now available full-view with a downloadable PDF option on Google Books. The book was a project of the Fulbright Korea Foundation and the Korean-American Educational Commission in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Fulbright Program.   Please use the link option (upper right hand corner of the page above the book cover) provided by Google to e-mail your friends or embed the book in your own blog or web site.

South Korea’s foreign language high schools have become a hot political issue.  A lawmaker from the ruling party has again suggested that they should be eliminated.   The first two foreign language high schools, Daewon and Daeil, were approved in 1992.  Starting in the mid-1990s they gained a reputation of sending most of their students to prestigious universities.  However, they are now being criticized for fueling the private institute or “cram school” market in Korea.

For further background on this issue, read the article in today’s Joongang Ilbo.

An article appeared in the Korea Times yesterday that illustrates the high profile and potentially controversial nature of English testing in South Korea.  The article deals with an ETS Korea scholarship program that selected eight high school students as “ETS Ambassadors.”

The article notes that the ETS promotion comes at a time when foreign language high schools in Korea have dropped TOEFL requirements.  I might add that the general context for this article involves the important question of whether or not TOEFL is an appropriate test for middle school and high school students, many of whom have been taking it in recent years, for lack of an alternative.

A headline caught my eye in the Joongang Daily the other day.  ”Daewon to Ax English Listening Tests in ‘10.”    In 2010, English listening tests will be scrapped for second year middle school students who plan to apply for admission to Daewon Foreign Language High School, one of the nation’s premier foreign language schools.  Instead, candidates will be selected based on recommendations from principals, school grades, and assessments by admissions officers.   The selection will also take into account regional balance in admissions.

Daewon is the first among 30 such schools nationwide to abolish the English listening test.   The principal of Daewon indicated that the new system is being adopted in order to counter the charge that foreign language high schools are the cause of the private education boom in Korea.

As noted in a recent article in the Chosun Ilbo, almost 2,000 students dropped out of Korea’s highly competitive foreign language high schools between 2004 and 2008.  This represented a dropout rate of approximately two percent.  The report suggested that those who dropped out had found themselves on the lower rungs of academic accomplishment, so chose to drop out and take the high school equivalence test instead.

On September 11, Dr. Hwang, Jong-Sung, Executive Vice President, IT Policy Division of the National Information Society Agency (NIA), visited Fulbright along with two 2009-2010 Luce Scholars, Nathaniel Gleicher and Brittan K. Heller.  The Asia Foundation Office in Korea facilitates the placement of Henry Luce Scholars at professional work sites in Korea.  Both Nathaniel and Brittan are graduates of Yale Law School.  Nathaniel is working with the NIA and Brittan is working for Gong-gam, a public interest law firm in Korea.  All three visitors are pictured meeting with Dr. James Larson, Deputy Director of the Fulbright Commission.

According to an article in the Chosun Ilbo today, eight out of ten salaried workers think they are underpaid because of their poor English skills.  In the survey of almost 1,500 employed workers conducted by a jobs site, 89.9 percent of respondents said that if they had a better command of English they would be better paid.

When asked what they would do if they had a better command of English, most said transfer to a larger firm (54.4 percent), followed by working in another field (20.4 percent), negotiating their salary (13.3 percent) and leaving the company to found their own business (7.8 percent).