The Education Market and Teacher Professionalism

Doctors make considerable efforts to share their medical views through newspapers and mass media and to communicate with the public. At times, they may also use that professional image to promote their own clinics or hospitals, but such efforts should by no means be disparaged.

That said, because any given treatment technique has its own advantages and disadvantages, in most cases it is difficult to judge clearly that one doctor’s personal view on medical care is more right or wrong than another’s. Even so, the most important point in debates over differing issues is always whether that technique brings greater benefit or harm to the patient.

In other words, when discussing the pros and cons of treatment method A compared with treatment method B, a doctor advocating method A may end up making remarks that weaken the other doctor’s position. But that is unavoidable, because the most important point of contention is whether the patient—that is, the general public—benefits or is harmed by receiving that treatment.

For example, in dentistry, many dentists were skeptical in the early days of the introduction of implants. Yet a major advantage of implant procedures was that they could reduce the amount of natural tooth structure removed from the patient. Put in extreme terms, the position of those who supported the introduction of implants was that existing dentists were insisting on procedures that removed too much of patients’ natural teeth.

But this did not mean that those existing dentists did not care about patients. In any debate over differing opinions among medical professionals, the most basic premise is to provide better medical services to patients, to the general public. Opinions diverge simply depending on what point one chooses to focus on and how one presents one’s view.

Likewise, as a teacher, I recognize every week the inefficiency and unfairness of the current school reality, in which classes, assessment, and the college admissions system are completely out of sync with one another. And I believe that much of this stems, even before the problems of the admissions system itself, from the lack of awareness among today’s schoolteachers of the role and meaning of public education.

No group is likely to find it easy to respond warmly and openly to internal criticism or a whistle-blowing perspective. This is especially true in a strongly collectivist society like Korea, where people are more acutely expected to be mindful of the sentiments of the majority within the group.

However, under the current admissions system, there can be a wide range of differing views on what kind of educational approach teachers and schools should take so that all students may benefit more fairly. If necessary, open discussion and debate should be possible. Yet most teachers do not enjoy discussing such contentious issues. This is not because they lack the knowledge or ability to debate, but because it is “uncomfortable.” It is probably because freely expressing their own thoughts may narrow their standing within the group.

In discussing differing perspectives among teachers, some views may run counter to what teachers or students generally feel. For instance, because student records have become so important in today’s high schools, the common and dominant view is that teachers should devote more zeal and effort to writing students’ detailed “special remarks” sections and then use them as the basis for more precise college admissions strategies.

In my case, however, my basic view of admissions is this: “The more teachers try to send students to more prestigious and popular universities, the less fair admissions become.” That may sound somewhat extreme, but an important reason I see it that way is that the relationship between Korean high school students and universities has already reached the stage of resembling an educational credentials market.

Of course, one cannot ignore the importance of the research function universities perform in society. But as far as the educational function at the undergraduate level is concerned, the practical essence of universities is the sale of diplomas that carry a certain social value—quite apart from any value judgment about whether this is right or wrong. In this educational credentials market, where students are buyers and universities are sellers, when teachers try to intervene in that competitive process, it ultimately becomes difficult to ensure fairness in admissions.

The reason that, in Europe and especially in the Anglo-American world—societies with a more liberal sociocultural environment that emphasizes individual independence and refrains from interfering with personal choice, even when the individuals in question are young adolescents—a teacher’s necessarily subjective observations of a student’s learning process can be accepted as trustworthy objective data is deeply related to that cultural context. We need to keep in mind the cultural difference from Korean society, where students and teachers are bound together by personal affection almost like parents and children and are not free from vertically ordered hierarchical relationships.

In the end, in the reality of Korean schools, where individualistic Western institutions have been imported into a collectivist society, at the very least efforts should be made to ensure that the contents of student records are objective records rather than strategic entries for admissions. And the essence of this attitude should lie in teachers’ self-awareness of professional distance—not in a superficial consciousness that one must merely follow Ministry of Education guidelines such as limits on the number of characters allowed in student record entries.

Furthermore, teaching itself should not focus on preparing students to solve CSAT questions, but should be grounded in the teacher’s pure passion for scholarship and education and in his or her educational philosophy. In a word, high school must be able to have meaning as a self-contained educational institution rather than an institution for college admissions preparation. (This too should stem not from a superficial consciousness that one must comply with the Ministry of Education’s guidelines to ease academic competition, but from a philosophy about the role of public education.)

When teachers and schools lose their professional attitude and sense of purpose and begin to drift, the result does not simply end with a decline in teachers’ personal self-esteem; it inevitably affects students as well.

Autonomy—one of the core elements of professionalism—originally comes from maintaining a certain “distance” that protects one from external pressures or interference, whether political or economic. Koreans often think first of pressure from powerful institutions as an obstacle to professional autonomy, but in the history of professionalism, a more important obstacle has been the selfish demands of clients (in the case of schools, students or parents). It is by no means easy to protect professional ethics from the unchecked forces of the market. For this reason, medicine and education in every society are carried out largely in the public sphere, rather than being left to a private market that must respond immediately and automatically to demand.

I cannot remember exactly when it began, but now it sometimes seems as though the offices of education are encouraging high school teachers to become admissions strategists (which is not to say this is inherently bad). Of course, the contradictions within the admissions system itself also contribute to the problem, but more than that, there seems to be a lack of self-awareness among teachers. In other words, I believe teachers must be able to ask themselves whether what they are doing is truly consistent with the proper mission of public education, and answer that question for themselves.

The more essential issue is not to view with prejudice the conflicting perspectives of teachers who take different educational approaches, but to remember that the basic premise of all educational discussion is that teachers fundamentally act in the interest of students. Criticism of the teaching profession by teachers likewise does not mean that current schoolteachers do not care about students or do not love them.

My criticism, too, is made in full recognition of the reality that many Korean teachers care for students almost with the feelings of parents. I am simply saying that, viewed from the perspective of society as a whole, such behavior may produce unintended side effects for students, for parents, and for teachers themselves.

For both doctors and teachers, the basic proposition underlying the services they provide is that they deal with patients and students on the basis of good will. Without that premise, medical procedures that cut open a patient’s body could not be justified, nor could the educational practice of calling students to school every day, making them attend classes, and evaluating them be justified.

Of course, this does not mean performing surgery entirely according to patients’ wishes or making school rules entirely according to students’ wishes. The core of professionalism lies precisely in continually seeking, reflecting on, and debating what constitutes objectively and in the long term a better service for clients, on the basis of such good will. The countless papers and academic society activities are the products and arenas of just such debate.

Ultimately, teachers need to recognize their professionalism more clearly. My own view of the admissions system is an extension of that conception of the teaching profession. Of course, one’s conception of the teaching profession itself is also open to debate. But whether it is one’s view of teaching, the admissions system, or the role of teachers and schools, a society in which “critical and open” thinking is not suppressed and in which “debate is alive” is a more mature society. I believe the teaching profession should strive toward that as well.

Bae Min, History Teacher at Soongeui Girls’ High School

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Original title: 학력시장과 교사의 전문직업성

Author: Bae Min

Date: 2020-10-12

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=13&idx=23160