Why should South Korea suspend the ban on English classes in kindergartens?

The Korean Ministry of Education announced on June 16 that it would suspend the ban on English teaching in public kindergartens. Some parents of preschool children strongly oppose this ban, thinking that the ban is aimed at public kindergartens, while private kindergartens are not restricted, which will lead to unfair education.

Children in a kindergarten in Seoul, South Korea learn etiquette.

In order to "step on the brakes" for the overheated early English education, the Korean Ministry of Education has previously decided to ban English teaching in kindergartens and nurseries from March this year. Korean preschool education curriculum does not include English. Korean Broadcasting Corporation (KBS) TV reported that this means that in principle, 46% kindergartens in China should stop offering English classes.

The ban caused strong opposition. About 7,000 people demanded the cancellation in the column "Voice of the Nation" on the website of the Presidential Palace, pointing out that the move was "only beneficial to the rich" and "violated the freedom of education" and demanded that "the public and private sectors should jointly ban it".

Affected by employment difficulties and other factors, some Koreans hope to improve their competitiveness by mastering English, and the overheating of English education has spread to the early childhood education stage. According to the statistics of the Korean Ministry of Education, there were 453 private "English kindergartens" in Korea in 20 17, and the communication in the parks was almost entirely in English, with a market scale of 270 billion won (about 654,380.6 billion yuan). According to one parliamentarian's estimation, the average admission fee for kindergartens is 570,000 won (about 3,434 yuan) per month, and the most expensive admission fee can reach 2 million won (about 6,543,800 yuan+2,000 yuan) per month.

In order to narrow the gap with private kindergartens, some Korean public kindergartens offer English classes for one or two hours every day in response to parents' demands. In addition to normal teaching, we also employ external lecturers for extra-curricular tutoring.

The tendency to emphasize English over Korean worries the Korean Ministry of Education. Although the ban on children's English classes has been suspended, the Ministry of Education has decided to ban public primary schools from offering English remedial classes for first-and second-grade students in schools from March this year.

There is no absolute fairness in the world.