Navigating Ambivalence around Advanced Learning: Korean Parents’ Meaning-Making in Their Choice of English-Language Kindergartens

• In Event: 30467 - Intensive Parenting Practices from Early Childhood to the Transition to Adulthood

Abstract

Drawing on the narratives of 26 middle-to-upper-class South Korean parents, this paper explores how they navigate the increasing pressures of early private education—or advanced learning—through enrolling their children in English kindergartens. Despite Korea’s record-low birth rate, these institutions—known for their high tuition fees and academically intensive curricula—continue to expand. This paradox raises questions about why fierce competition among both children and parents persists and even intensifies, pushing children into private education at increasingly younger ages. Findings reveal that while English proficiency has lost its exclusivity as a class marker, parents continue investing heavily in English kindergartens, not for upward mobility but as a defensive strategy to maintain class status. To navigate critiques of excessive early education, parents employ different framing strategies. Those choosing academically focused kindergartens downplay their emphasis on achievement, portraying them as comprehensive and beneficial for holistic development. Parents favoring play-based institutions highlight their relatively child-friendly parenting philosophy, distinguishing themselves from those they see as more intense. A “hybrid model” allows others to frame their decision as the most rational, believing it balances academic and play-based approaches. Despite these differing strategies, all parents justify their participation in competitive private education by aligning it with the ideal of liberal and emotionally supportive parenting, mitigating both external criticism and personal guilt. However, these strategies ultimately reinforce the very system they attempt to navigate. English kindergartens function as institutional mechanisms that normalize early private education, ushering children onto the “private education express”—a structured, hierarchical system that promotes long-term involvement in private education. Parental choices, shaped by the multifaceted ideal of the “good parent,” reflect both individual agency and collective responses to systemic pressures. Ultimately, parents reconcile their ambivalence toward intensive early education by preserving their moral and emotional integrity while inadvertently sustaining Korea’s private education system.

Authors

• Yeri Song, Yonsei University

• Juyeon Park, Yonsei University