Given that I agree with most of this:
… I am asking myself: what next? It’s not just problems in education that have me wondering this, of course: there are other things afoot that have me checking the escape hatch to this orbital sat, making sure my suit doesn’t have any leaks, because hard vacuum is a bitch.
But for the record, I think the problems are systemic to education everywhere, but the parts that are exacerbated in Korean education are especially hard for me to reconcile myself with.
A colleague in another department I was talking with told me the idea that undergrads are incapable of individual or creative thought goes way up the ladder at my university, effectively almost all the way to the top. She was told, when she was hired, that it is unfair to think students at the undergrad level can think critically at all, and it is unfair to expect them to do so.
Now, people I suppose are entitled to think otherwise. I cannot say the Korean education system as a whole is “wrong.” But I do think it’s a case of the system, the society, fighting the wrong fight here: I think critical thinking and creative writing are absolutely crucial skills for the world we’re tumbling into, for the world we’re now in. I think without them, we are utterly screwed.
It is unfair to ask students to think critically, if you’re not teaching them the skills associated with it. Persisting in not teaching it, though, is unconscionable if you ask me.
So… what next?