Improving schools is the best way to advance a country.
Education plays more and more important role in today’s society, because it impacts not only on individual, but also society as a whole. Especially Koreans, who believe education is a key to success, tend to spend more energy and efforts on quality private educations than any other societies. However, I think we must improve public schools rather than focus on private schools to advance the country. This is because current education in schools force people to seek alternative educations and causes huge waste of money and time
First off, current education makes people to look for alternative classes. Because they are not satisfied with the current schooling, high numbers of families consider moving into overseas for better education. According to the recent poll by Korean government, more than 50% students are dissatisfied with the quality of class from public school, and 25% out of those dissatisfiers answered that they consider to leave the country for quality schooling. It is true that many students are moving to the US or Germany for better education, and this phenomena will eventually hurt the competitiveness of country by losing students with potential.
In addition, ineffective public education leads an increase of private education market. This is because those who cannot afford to leaving the country focus on private education. The recent article from Joong-ang daily announced that more than 80% of middle and high school students are attending “Hagwon”, a private academy, for better education. Majority of them are spending more than 300 USD a month, and 10 hours a week in private classes. The amount of money occupies a huge portion in disposable income of the family and inevitably becomes a huge burden to the family and the society.
To sum up, improving public school is the best for the society and country because it prevents good students leave the country to look up better education and stops students and their families to spend too much money and time on private education. In this regards, I firmly believe that schools must improve the quality of education for the sake of country.