An Exam-Obsessed Regime in Korean Education: Any Connection to the Confucian Tradition?

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Applied Perspectives on Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in Education (Table 15)

Abstract

This paper aims at showing how exam-obsessed regime of modern education in Korea may be a distorted way of responding to modern education system, mediated by the culturally Confucian minded Korean public. What underlies the Confucian mind is its assumption that education is supposed to nurture moral virtue rather than intellectual achievement. The paper will explore how this Confucian emphasis on moral virtue in education has been ideologically exploited by modern education system in Korea, disguising its dark side and justifying its morally ambiguous social function. This task is to see if the healthy recovery of the old assumption may provide us with an alternative vision of education, leading into the weakening of the exam-regime in modern education in Korea.

Author

• Duck-Joo Kwak, Seoul National University