In June 2013, President Park Geun-hye expressed concerns over a survey result that indicated about 70 percent of high school students in Korea believed that South Korea invaded the North and started the Korean War. Some experts doubted students denied the history; instead, many suspected that the survey participants were simply confused with semantics between “bukchim” and “namchim.” The unintended consequence of this episode came when President Park expressed some discomfort with how history is being taught in high schools; her office became hard-bent on mandating history as part of the college entrance national exam in anticipation that such policy can right our history education.

One may argue that this turn of events unmasked the vicious tension between conservatives and pro-North liberals in Seoul politics. Indeed, South Korea is still at war with North Korea, and a great deal of politics in Korea is consumed with national security issues. However, we believe this event also mirrors the reality of Korean elites and political leaders in their failing to recognize the essential goals of reformed K-12 education and neglecting their responsibility to build our education system for the future with a focus on critical thinking and creativity.

President Park’s remarks about education in her inaugural address shed some light on her vision for Korean classrooms. Park claimed that the government will provide support so that the schools can develop each student’s potential, and called for a new system that will reinforce individual talent to build a strong nation. Other versions of President Park’s speeches seem to echo her rhetoric of hope and happiness as the core value of her government. Her vision centers on the idea of welfare and education becoming the instrument for the economic prosperity of this country.

How does her vision stack up against those outlined by educators and scholars who dedicate their professional lives to K-12 education? Some educators claim that our education system should develop the whole person and facilitate learning in an environment of trust and fairness. Some progressive scholars champion the community of learners in which students develop potential and grow to commit to social justice. More recently, new educational goals ― such as commitment to lifelong learning, diversity, compassion, creativity, innovation, or acting to protect and restore ecosystems ― are emerging. In particular, some neoliberal scholars assert that education should produce a competent workforce that enables the economy to be more competitive, and that schools should employ more objective metrics to measure efficiency.

The complexity in educational visions leaves much room for debate, especially when one notion conflicts with another. Creativity and innovation are at the heart of a powerful shift occurring in our lives as society moves toward the growing recognition that creative thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration and innovation are more important than receiving a perfect score in standardized testing. However, the current system of education in Korea, whose central mission is to prepare our students to attend prestigious colleges, demands that almost all education be measurable. In this way, policymakers and those with vested interests team up to maintain the status quo by promoting standardized tests on limited academic skills and focusing on test preparation at the expense of creative and critical thinking skills.

Testing over historical facts on the high-stakes national exam does not enable our children to have pride in our cultural heritage; belittling other cultures while asserting egotistical nationalism only breeds insecure nativism in our children’s minds. Like many social sciences, history seeks to understand how human experiences and events of the past influence the present and future. The efficacy of history education has little to do with how well students remember historical facts or regurgitate our cultural heritage as superior to those of our neighboring countries.

Our collective experience tells that children learn best not when they are told how to think and act, but rather when they are shown how. We cannot show our children that our society is fair and values individual potential when the national system for college admission is designed to select those who attain high test scores, and students from poor families do not have access to higher education. We cannot show our children that our society needs a creative and innovative workforce when people such as artists, writers and scientists feel they are second-class citizens.

Koreans say, “Education comes in full swing after a hundred years of careful planning.” The careful planning can begin with a national debate on educational visions and reforming the nationwide policy for college admissions. It is not too late to put our heads together to devise a grand educational system that prepares our children for the new world of innovative technology and global values.

By Lim Woong and Son Ji-won

Lim Woong is assistant professor of mathematics education at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. Son Ji-won is assistant professor of mathematics education at University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. ― Ed.