Education Fever

4. Coordinating Education with Economic Planning

110 4 Coordinating Education with Economic Planning The aspirations of millions of rich and poor families for social advancement drove South Korea’s remarkable educational expansion, but it did not always drive it in the directions sought by the state. South Korean schools provided an increasingly literate workforce that was of enormous value in the nation’s economic development. The state, however, had dif¤culty harnassing the demand for education toward the needs of an industrializing economy. This accounts for one of the paradoxes of South Korean educational development : in a nation noted for its successful, state-directed economic development policies, there appeared to be a lack of emphasis on vocational and technical education. Instead, educational development had a momentum of its own, independent of economic strategies or needs. This was not because South Korean governments maintained a laissez-faire attitude toward the growth of formal schooling; successive administrations made repeated efforts to coordinate educational development with economic planning. They had, however, only mixed success because attempts to encourage vocational and technical education con¶icted with the public’s perceptions about the purpose and nature of schooling. Koreans sought education to gain status for themselves and their families (as noted), and prevailing attitudes were such that this meant being a scholar, not a technician. The South Korean state—especially after 1961, when it became increasingly focused on pursuing economic development objectives— attempted to mesh educational development with economic plans, creating at times a tug-of-war with the public over educational policy. This tug-of-war coordinating education with economic planning 111 became important in shaping educational development. It also points to the strengths and limits of the South Korean “developmental state.” educational and economic planning before 1961 Before 1961, efforts to coordinate education with economic development were not very systematic. From 1945 Korean of¤cials, many educators, the press, and American advisers called for greater stress on vocational education and less on the humanities, and the Rhee administration made various pronouncements on the importance of promoting technical and vocational training. But vocational education policyin the early years of the republic was largelya failure. This failure illustrates the limitationofformalpolicymakinginconstructing the kindof educational system that informed opinion both within and outside the administration thought the state needed. The importance of technical and vocational education was recognized by all administration of¤cials and educators, as well as the knowledgeable public. During the American occupation, emphasis was given to technical education at the secondary level, and most of the new secondaryschools opened in the yearsimmediatelyafter 1945were vocationalin orientation . The Korean War further highlighted the need for citizens with practical skills in reconstruction. Korean educators and of¤cials spoke of the need to break with the Confucian tradition of disdain for manual labor. They also worried about the problem of the educated unemployed. Koreans remembered the Japanese emphasis on technical pro¤ciency in education and admired American “know-how.” All education ministers, as well as bureaucrats in the ministries of the Interior, Finance, Reconstruction, and Defense, called for greater emphasis on vocational education, as did leaders of the opposition. Yet vocational education languished. Upon liberation, some 50,000 students enrolled in academic secondary schools and about 30,000 in vocational schools. By 1952, when secondary education was divided into middle schools that all provided general education and high schools with either academic or vocational training, there were 74,463 students attending vocational high schools and 59,431 attending academic high schools (see table 1). There was a sharp rise in high school enrollment immediately after the Korean War. Vocational high schools, however, expanded at a much slower rate than academic ones, and in 1955, the ratio was reversed, with 122,991 in vocational schools 112 coordinating education with economic planning and 141,702 in academic schools. As the wave of post–Korean War students subsided and high school enrollment slowed down, the trend away from vocational education continued. By 1960, the number of students in vocational schools had declined to 99,071 while academic school enrollment had increased to 164,492. Vocational secondary school enrollment had increased only 30 percent in eight years and was declining, whereas enrollment in academic secondary schools had increased almost two and a half times.1 The MOE under Rhee launched a number of programs to promote vocational education. In 1952, it announced that the promotion of vocational education was one of its main priorities, and during...