"Agree with the Principle of Excluding Killer Questions but Yoon's Remarks Are Ambiguous and Confusing"

Policy Committee Member Jang Seung-jin of Society for No Private Education Concerns
KBS Radio 'Choi Kyung-young's Strongest Current Affairs' Interview
"June is a very important time for students and parents"

Jang Seung-jin, a policy committee member of 'Society Without Worries About Private Education,' described the government's policy to exclude killer questions as "a confusing situation with mixed opinions depending on interpretation."

In an interview on June 20th with KBS Radio's 'Choi Kyung-young's Strong Current Affairs,' Jang said, "While it is desirable in the sense that the principle that the CSAT questions should not deviate from the school curriculum has been clearly stated, many are concerned that, with only five months left before the CSAT, the vague remarks lacking specificity have made it very difficult to predict the entrance exam," he said.

Jang explained, "With less than five months remaining until the CSAT, June is a very important time for students and parents," adding, "This is because the June evaluation mock exam is the period when they refine their entrance exam strategies by gauging the trends and difficulty of the CSAT questions."

On the 19th, the government agreed to exclude so-called 'killer questions' (ultra-difficult questions) from the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and to review the system, including question-setting techniques, to ensure an appropriate difficulty level for the CSAT. Educational content is displayed in front of an academy in Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. [Image source=Yonhap News]

He continued, "Due to the president's remarks, it has become difficult to predict what types of questions will appear on the CSAT and at what difficulty level, causing great concern among parents and students. If the CSAT changes, the way schools teach will also be affected," he said.

Regarding whether it is possible to secure discrimination even if killer questions are excluded, he said, "There will be limits to strictly ranking (scores) as is currently done."

However, he added, "The interpretation that discrimination disappears just because killer questions are excluded is an overinterpretation," "Killer questions were born in a distorted way because our society focuses too much on ranking students question by question. In fact, no advanced education country has anything like killer questions," he said.

He also said, "Various educational methods to differentiate mathematical ability have been discussed," and that discrimination can be sufficiently secured through other methods.

However, he noted, "The president's remarks were somewhat ambiguous," explaining, "The statement that questions should be within the scope of the public education curriculum and cover areas dealt with in the curriculum probably does not simply mean that questions should be based on topics appearing in textbooks. If interpreted narrowly as just the textbook, it would be impossible to create questions because there are currently 11 different high school Korean language textbooks, and students encounter different works and topics."

He added, "It is likely closer to the meaning that questions should be created so that even those who have only completed public education can solve them by considering vocabulary level and topic depth comprehensively," and said, "(The government) has said it will advance the question-setting techniques, and since it will be reflected in the September mock exam, verification will be necessary then."

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