What are his thoughts on the English craze sweeping the country? "There are people who need to speak English at work for business purposes, but not everyone in the country needs to speak English well," he says. "In fact, I believe the emphasis should be on classical Chinese in order to improve Koreans' understanding of their own language. Learning Japanese or Chinese seems a lot more effective for Koreans than struggling to learn English. This is the very reason why Latin is regarded as so important in France and Germany, because Latin forms the basis of their languages."
My experiences in the public schools have made me think it'd be better for Koreans to learn Japanese as their second language, because of its geographic and grammatical proximity, and make English courses optional for those who wish to take them, but of course we know the baggage that would come with mandatory Japanese courses. I touched a little on Koreans' decreasing Hanja proficiency in a post last year.
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Although I don't know if he intended it, some people use the argument that since so few jobs require english, we shouldn't teach english in grade school. Which is akin to saying, since so few jobs require algebra we shouldn't teach algebra in high school.
In education at the lower levels we teach a broad range of subjects to all so they will have options later in life.
Yes it would be good if Koreans showed more attention to the Chinese element in their language (70% of their vocabulary?). Incidentally I came across an old book written by a Westerner which gives a radically different account of the invention of the Hangul script. The author said it had to do with the various states or countries arriving in China to pay tribute to the Chinese Emperor. It seems that King Sejong was embarrassed that Korea, unlike the other tributary states, did not have its own script. Korea of course had adapted the Chinese script for its own use. So the Hangul script was created as part of Korea's international policy. Everywhere else, I read that the Hangul script was created by the benevolent Sejong for the benefit of his own people (although the Encyclopaedia Britannica states that Hangul wasn't used in Korean universities until 1945). Is this theory credible? I'm not an academic, I'm just curious about that story.
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