Reform 'Suneung'

Students head to a high school in Seoul to take the College Scholastic Ability Test, also known in Korean as the "Suneung," a national college entrance exam that is held once a year, Nov. 18. Yonhap

By Scott Shepherd

Last week saw Korea's yearly university admissions exam take place, accompanied as usual by an autumnal flurry of headlines. Given the world's current obsession with Korea, it's hardly a surprise that the test made international headlines. The test's English name is the College Scholastic Ability Test, or CSAT, but it is known more commonly as the "Suneung." The news often highlights the fact that planes are diverted to avoid distraction during the English Listening segment, or that police are on standby to help any students unfortunate enough to run late on the big day.

Underlying it all there's often a sense of implicit mirth at how over the top the whole thing is. And of course, comedy is sometimes the best response, an idea that Josh "the Korean Englishman" tapped into when he filmed native English speakers being flummoxed by its English reading component. It's fun and funny, and it also makes something pretty clear: the "Suneung" doesn't do a great job of measuring a person's true ability to communicate in English. Adding to the absurdity is the fact that most of the test-takers will go on to study degrees taught in Korean, not English.

The test is obviously in urgent need of reform.

First is the more specific question of English that Josh touches on in his videos. I'm hardly the first to argue that the English section is unrelated to most of the English that will be encountered in real life, so I don't want to dwell on it. However, I want to consider the counter-argument in favor of the English component as it currently stands. The Korea Times published an article a few years ago in which Robert Kluender, professor of linguistics at the University of California San Diego, defended the test. The issue with Kluender's argument is that he seems to misunderstand the purpose of the "Suneung."

The exam is not assessing whether the students will be able to cope with studying university-level English linguistics at an American college. Rather, the government forces students to study English for the "Suneung" in the hope that they will go on to graduate and work in roles where they can communicate with others internationally in English. The test is utterly inept at measuring this.

It is true that my relative incompetence in Korean and, to a greater extent, Mathematics, means that I'm not really qualified to comment on other sections of the test in detail. But aside from the well-documented problems with the English section, there are more fundamental flaws with the wider test and indeed the system underlying it.

For one, the test takes place only once a year and it last eight hours. With the kind of pressure that society places on test-takers, the whole thing becomes a measure of endurance and resilience at least as much as of academic aptitude. Of course, those former qualities are both great assets which we should strive to encourage in our students, but they are hardly the only things that count.

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Moreover, there's no scope whatsoever for any expression of creativity or imagination ― qualities which are so vital in our world. The test has no space for a sense of beauty, a touch of poetry. Sure, the test foregrounds the next generation of administrators and civil servants, but all the artists and dreamers and creators are ground down by the system. How well would Mozart or Shakespeare have done taking the "Suneung"?

From an administrative point of view, I can understand why the test's current set-up is so popular: the multiple choice questions mean that tests can be marked quickly and accurately (and cheaply) by a machine, reducing fears of human error, corruption or the inevitably unbalanced marking that naturally results from humans making choices.

After all, anyone who's ever participated in formal marking for exam boards knows that marking written responses at scale is a nightmare. If you give a group of experts the same rubric to grade the same essay, they will not all give you the same mark.

And with a test that's seen as so important, any kind of human intervention is certainly going to lead to serious issues, not to mention the possibility of corruption. To be honest, though I imagine there is already enough abuse going on unreported. The College Admissions Scandal in the US makes it clear enough that some rich people will unfairly game the system if they think they can get away with it.

When I consider all the obscene lengths people go to when they (or more often their children) are taking the "Suneung," I feel a sense of pity. Because tests don't matter, not really. Of course it's important to have a fulfilling career, but there's so much more to life than graduating from a prestigious university or hoarding wealth or boasting about whatever it is that people see as material success. Likewise, there are plenty of people who ace all the exams and attend the top universities who still go on to thoroughly ruin their lives.

That's not to say I'm some kind of anti-exam hippy. I have worked and continue to work for exam boards, and I use tests in my own teaching. Used properly, they're a great educational tool as well as a way to assess progress. There's clearly a place for them in school and in life. But that place cannot be at the very center.

In many ways Korea's high regard for education is one of its greatest strengths. It has stood the country in great stead for many years. Indeed, Korea's transformation over the past few decades can be attributed to the way it prizes education. But it has become warped into a harmful obsession, a competition that is as much to do with power, pride and status as anything else. It harms the physical and mental health both of young people and their parents.

It is the moral and political duty of Korea's next president to reform this test. To be sure, it will take a long time to implement, and there are other pressing matters to deal with. Nonetheless, it should be a priority for whoever wins next year. Crucially, however, it's not just up to the head of state ― and in fact, without public support the president will never be able to implement reforms. University admissions teams, teachers, tutors, parents and others all have a responsibility to shift their focus away from this climactic annual test which causes so much pain and suffering. Change is possible.

Frankly, the obsession with education is an indication that in Korea ― as in many countries ― status, power and wealth have become the culture's idols. But on these altars we must not offer our children as sacrifices.

Dr. Scott Shepherd is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.