Dismantling Myths about the Meritocracy in Korea

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Critical analyses of civic education and young people's sense of citizenship, civic attitudes, and participation

Proposal

With regard to the meritocracy, Korean society has the four major myths as follows: 1) Meritocracy is fair and desirable society. 2) Our society is not the meritocracy. 3) If the credential society is in a state of total collapse, meritocracy functions better in this society. 4) If the Meritocracy is completed, the problem of excessive competition and private education will be alleviated, and ultimately, education of humanism will be blossomed, and finally, the positive global citizens will be raised based on this desirable climate. Based on these myths, Korean government has made every efforts in order to complete the meritocracy. However, variety of problems such as social conflicts, social gap between the rich and the poor, education war, and shadow education are getting worse and worse. Actually, this study demonstrates that these various problems are the shadow of meritocracy through the empirical data and the literature reviews. The myths about the meritocracy is based on that merits are built mainly through the individual’s efforts. This study proves that the role of pure efforts in merits building is quite low contrary to our belief. This study will contribute to relieve the educational problems by providing the new horizon of knowledge to arouse the fundamental cause of Korean educational climate. Eventually, Korean education will be the starting point for deriving new paradigm that can successfully raise the future community members.

Author

• Namgi Park, Gwangju National University of Education