Traditional Education in Korea
From Korea: The Land People and Customs by George Heber Jones, 1907.
Location: North Korea, South Korea
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Education
From Korea: The Land People and Customs by George Heber Jones, 1907.
At birth the welcome accorded to a Korean depends upon his sex. If a boy, he is greeted with a smile; if a girl, the smiles are few and the wry faces many. The destruction of girl babies has never been a custom in Korea, but nevertheless they are valued but lightly.
This is due largely to the fact that girls are sent in marriage outside the clan, thus in this removal to the husband's home, becoming a lost asset to their own family. Girls are therefore regarded as a drain on the family resources, for after feeding, clothing, and caring for them for a number of years they go to enrich some other clan.
Now while this is true, it is also true that the life of a Korean boy or girl is not an unhappy one. Many pleasant customs attend their childhood, and they enjoy life to the full of their capacity. The boy begins school at five years of age. Schools are as a rule private in character, there being one in nearly every village, supported either by local funds or maintained by some wealthy resident. Sometimes these local schools are endowed, the endowment usually consisting of rice lands or a bull.
Education is through the medium of the Chinese classics, which are bawled out by the boys in the first years of their school life at the top of their voices. At first the boy learns only the sounds and meaning of the characters, and after he has acquired about two thousand of these he is taught to explain them in their grammatical and textual sense.
The course of study in these schools is on a religious foundation. The Korean scriptures—that is, the Confucian Classics—is the chief text-book, and though a Korean may come from these schools knowing very little of arithmetic, geography, or history, he does know the religious faith of his people, and how to conform to its requirements.
One of the supreme objects of Korean education is to impress upon the boy that life without religion reduces him to the level of birds and beasts. A Korean would regard with amazement the American debate on the advisability of teaching the Bible in the public schools. He regards a man without a knowledge of his Bible as queerly educated. There are no schools for girls outside the sphere of Christian influence, and never have been.
Jones, George Heber. Korea; The Land, People, and Customs. Jennings and Graham, 1907.
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