Current Teacher: "Students Fear Getting Everything Right More Than Making Mistakes"

Gwangju Salesio High School Teacher CBS Interview
"If Killers Disappear, Mistakes Determine Grades"

Seo Bu-won, a teacher at Gwangju Salesio High School who has been working at a high school for 26 years, criticized the government's policy to exclude 'killer questions' from the CSAT, pointing out problems with both the timing and content of the announcement.

In an interview on CBS Radio's 'Kim Hyun-jung's News Show' on the 20th, Seo said that students are very confused due to the announcement of the policy to exclude killer questions.

He said, "There is a saying, 'If the killers disappear, mistakes determine the grade,'" adding, "(Students) say they are more afraid that other friends get all the questions right than that they themselves get questions wrong."

Lee Ju-ho, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

He emphasized that having discriminative power is more important than everyone getting good grades, saying, "To use an analogy, when two teams tie for third place in professional baseball rankings, there is no fourth place, and the next rank goes down to fifth."

Seo said that the government's policy could be perceived by students as "Are all questions going to become killers?" and added, "Until now, examinees have been taking monthly mock tests and training to prepare for and adapt to the CSAT, adjusting their bodies to the patterns, but suddenly, out of the blue, this kind of change comes in, so anxiety can only increase."

Regarding the government's policy direction to "strengthen public education and reduce dependence on private education," Seo said he "agrees with the big picture" but pointed out that "it cannot be cut off abruptly like a quick and decisive stroke."

He said, "There are many big issues such as the transition to an absolute evaluation system, securing trust in college admissions, the survival threat faced by regional universities, reforming the hierarchical academic structure centered on the metropolitan area, and many others, but all of these seem to disappear somewhere, and the education issue is being replaced by a trivial problem of whether to include or exclude a single killer question type, which is very frustrating."

He also criticized the government, saying, "They say they will maintain autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools, but when comparing autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools through the CSAT, these are the killer questions," and added, "To bring up an innocent question type and make it an issue in that context seems inconsistent and lacking coherence."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.