정병호 교육게임

Abstract

     Education in Korea today has become a symbol of the violation of children’s human rights and the economic burden that parents face. This situation has resulted from the expansion and deepening of the competition for knowledge, as a competition for social status, which has in turn led to the reproduction of social hierarchy. This study seeks to reveal how the current reality of Korean educational competition is closely associated with the illusion and fear of the adult generations, and how they amplified the phenomenon of over-education. The study reveals that, as well as passive and defensive elements such as the fear of losing, the active and aggressive elements of the game, such as the desire to win and the illusion of victory have led all the members of society to actively participate in this national obsession, the “education game.” Almost all matters pertaining to education have become the subject of competition for competition’s sake, which in turn has led to the advent of a large industry of private education that has subsumed highly educated people for the education for profits. This overheated education game egged on by the entire society has caused young students to be pushed to the limit as early competitors and led parents to become blind sponsors for them. This process has been further strengthened amidst the neoliberal era of globalization and hyper-competition. This study reveals how capital, markets, and privileged social groups have used the education game to ensure the reproduction of a discriminative social structure that is based on the myth of meritocracy.

Keywords: education, game, meritocracy, examination, social class, competition

Biographic Introduction

Chung Byung-Ho is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director of the Center for Multicultural Studies at Hanyang University, South Korea. He received his Ph. D. in anthropology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992. His publications include “Between Defector and Migrant: Identities and Strategies of North Koreans in South Korea (2009),” and “Changes in Korean Family Structure and the Conflicts of Ideology and Practice in Early Socialization (2003).” He has participated in various NGO activities for the cooperative childcare in South Korea and for the relief and education of North Korean children.