Page 19 - 2018 송도타임즈(통권 10호)

SONGDO HIGH SCHOOL · READING MATERIALS

Who is the Curriculum Reform for?

Lee Jeong-woo

Recently there has been a lot of controversy over education pol- curriculum, focused on ‘combined talent’.
icies such as reforming college admissions, changing educational
processes and abolishing specialised high schools. But what we What an education system should really provide is a way to pro-
really need to consider is whether reforms are just about show- duce styles of talent that our society requires. Let us see if the
ing-off without giving a fundamental solution or goals. education system has developed in the direction of producing
creative talent.
Education is defined as an activity allowing members of a so-
ciety to adapt to their social environments and advances society First of all, creative thinking usually involves numbers of failures.
affairs. Ultimately it can be seen as an activity to nurture ‘Hu- It is, therefore, difficult to be considered as an effective way of
man Resources’. The debate on education, therefor, should in- studying. To find creative ways to study, even if you end up giving
evitably precede the debate on the ideology a society pursues and the same answer, you need to explore, create, and verify the new
the corresponding ‘Human Nature’. And we will have to look at paths which are not the ones that everyone already knows. This
whether they are done properly before bringing the reform to our process would give us a hard time and will take fare amount of
education system. schedule. Tests requiring that several types of problems be solved
quickly within a given range of tests do not wait for such fail-
Whilst the 7th curriculum placed great importance on creativity ures and times. The College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT, prop-
as a desirable human being, the importance changed every time erly called “soo-neung” in Korea) corresponds to these kinds of
the reform was made. The revised curriculum in 2009 focused on tests. What is more noticeable, however, is that the school exams,
“global creative talent for delivering and sharing”, and in 2015, it which take up a large percentage in the current admission sys-
changed its focus to “creative and creative talent.” In this process, tem, are not far different from this method. Since the beginning
‘creativity’ has degenerated into a formality of rhetoric. In fact, of the seventh educational revision, the way in which multiple-
the introduction of intensive education systems and the adequacy choice tests are conducted within a given time period has not
of education contents, which were the key factors of the curricu- changed much. These tests still have the biggest impact on school
lum revised in 2009, are not closely related to creativity. Similarly records than subjective problems and performance evaluations.
liberal arts-to-natural science integration, a key part of the 2015

November 2018 No.10 17