Problem?
Many Koreans would know who this woman is. You don't know? Then, what about the orange on her head? Yes, she is the one who is famous for the "orange". Yi Gyeong Sook, ex-chief of the Presidential Undertaking Committee, raised several social issues regarding Korean Education. For example, she once introduced her episode in America that she was not able to order orange juice because she pronounced it as "오렌지", not "어륀지". Based on her personal anecdote, she claimed the necessity of changing Loanword Orthography. Furthermore, she also suggested a lot of English educatinon policies, most notably "English Immersion Program" - teaching all the subjects in English for all students (can you imagine it? Such a ridiculous policy ㅡㅡ) As you can see, Koreans are crazy at English. Parents are pouring millions of money per a year and some people are asserting conversion of an official language into English. Most signboards on the street are in English and teenagers treat English as "cool" and Korean as "dull". Parents are sending their kids to English-speaking countries such as America, Canada, Philippines, and even Singapore (Actually my second sister is the one who considered to send her 9-year-old son to Singapore....) Let's see KMLA. School is forcing students to keep EOP. Teachers even write "EOP violation" on the postings on the cafeteria board. EOP catchers have to fulfill their quarters for themselves not to go to court. We even recite our school moto which contains our goal of study in English, saying that English is not the ultimate goal of our study. Our "national" ceremony is also done in English.
Now, let's straightly see the reality. According to the article in 2008, only 19.5% of 6th graders earned "extraordinary" achievements in Korean while 46.6% of them earned the same in English. In addition, there are more students who earned "insufficiency" in Korean rather than in English. Of course, the results does not mean that Koreans are better in English. However, these statistics at least imply that Koreans are putting less intention on Korean than English. More and more students are having trouble with Korean language. In case of Hanja (Chinese Letters), which forms most part of Korean Language, students do not know what "父母" means while they know what "parents" means. KMLA is not an exception. Especially for international field students, we take only two classes of Korean in a week, while taking at least four classes of English (in my case, six classes). Sometimes, I cannot remind the proper Korean vocabulary in the situation, but instead, English words in my head. I'm afraid of my Korean being underdeveloped!
Introducing one of episodes regarding trouble dealing with my own language, I'd like to share what happened yesterday in my home. Right after arriving at my home, I had to held Korean traditional memoral service for my grand-grandfather. During the ceremony, there was a time to recite a written prayer, which I undoubtly supposed as none-of-my-duty. However, suddenly my grandfather told me to recite it outloud as our family's eldest son of the eldest son (You know, Koreans respect this "eldest" in our tradition) I grasped the paper, but could not read it. Why? It was all in Hanja. Instead of reciting outloud as my grandfather expected, I had to be a mosquito just following what my father whispering in my ears. Of course, this is not vernacular Korean. However, this is part of my language, part of my national integrity, and part of my culture. But I could not read it. This might be what Koreans are doing.What should we do?
Though it seems that the government wants all the people in Korea to speak English fluently so that Korea has "global competitiveness" in international market (even KAIST, the national university founded to raise scientists and engineers, applied EOP for all the lectures established), I believe that the governmental policy should be fundamentally changed. Not everyone should be necessarily good at English. In case of Japan, when they first adopted modernization policy, they also considered conversion of official language into English. To gain advanced Western knowledges and share what they had effectively, fluent English skill was desperately needed. However, they picked another choice. Rather than turning all the people as English-speaker, they founded specialized governmental organization for the Foreign Language Translation. The organization translated most of the western books and contributed a lot Japanizing those knowledges. As a result, Japan could develop as a World #2 nation (now it seems little different, though) by concentrating on basic science and other things except English. Today, though Japanese are horrible at English (even those who earned Nobel Prizes were not speak a word of English), they are one of the superpower.
What's more important than English is specialization. We Koreans are losing too many things due to devoting ourselves to the English. If we turn our attention to something else, surely there would be big difference. Instaed, government will have to do their best to force Foreign Language Schools to find their right way. Though those schools already became prep-schools for IVY or SKY, their original raison d'etre was to raise students specialized at foreign languages. If we are eqipped with both foreign language specilizers and extraordinary specializers in their own field, Korea would be the nation which will "BE" a standard, not the one which "FOLLOW" the standard.
P.S. In case of KMLA, it is true that we need EOP for our better English. However, I hope we at least try to make sure what our foundation is. I want school to do more for our tradition. The beginning would be reciting our school moto in Korean, and held national ceremony in Korean.
<Debate Motions>
THB KMLA should recite school moto in English during national ceremony
THS KMLA policy forcing all students to recite school moto in their morning exercise everyday.
THS Abolition of national ceremony in KMLA
