Ruling Party Forces Passage of Private School Bill Jeju Private Schools Shut Doors to New Students School Leaders Take Stand against Private School Law More Private Schools Join Rebellion against Law Reform Private Schools Yield Under Massive Official Pressure Double Standards in the War on Private Schools

Three independent high schools including Korea Minjok Leadership Academy came into being in 2002. Three more -- Sangsan High School, Hyundae Cheongun High School and Haeundae High School -- were born the next year. Independent high schools can admit students according to their own criteria and enjoy a wide range of discretion in the curriculum. Their tuition fees can be no more than three times those of state schools. The idea was to create a perception that these are real schools that provide real education. Many hoped that their creation would stimulate school education as a whole.

Sangsan High School requires freshmen and sophomores to read two books a month, or 50 books a year. When students have read their Western philosophy, Korean and world literature and books on music and fine arts, they give presentations and discuss them in groups. Authors, translators and other celebrities are invited to lecture students every two weeks -- Seoul National University president Chung Woo-chan has been among lecturers. At Korea Minjok Leadership Academy in Wonju, all lectures are in English except Korean language and history. The school has some 83 clubs, and each student is active in an average of four. Among the 42 clubs at Sangsan High School, one makes football robots, while the music club is so good it gives orchestral concerts.

The extracurricular lectures given at independent high schools are selective, and students choose them according to their standards. For example, there are 337 after-class lectures at Sangsan High School per year, some given to only one or two students each. Out of Sangsan’s 87 teachers, 14 have doctorates, and 28 out of 66 at Korea Minjok Leadership Academy.

Because students are taught in homogeneous groups, results are excellent. In a nationwide mock exam last year, 26.8 percent of Sangsan High freshmen got top grades in Korean, 49.3 percent in math and physics and 34 percent in foreign languages. In a trial exam the same students took in September as sophomores, that had jumped to 45 percent in Korean, 76 percent for science and 64 percent in foreign languages. "Children's education is very difficult however hard the parents try. But because they are stimulated by their peers, my kids study by themselves and, above all, are happy with their school life," says Im Yon-jwa, the mother of a daughter in senior year and a son in freshman year at Sangsan.

Yet the 2008 college entrance exam ignores any gaps among schools and stresses school recommendations. As a result, independent high schools have been plunged into crisis. Some 56, or 88 percent, of 64 seniors in humanities at Hyundae Cheongun High School gained grade 1 in the nationwide mock exam in March. But only three would get grade 1 in transcripts from their own school, whose standards are higher. Seventeen Hyundae Cheongun freshmen and 31 Sangsan freshmen have swiftly moved to other high schools in a bid to avert such disadvantages.

Each person has his or her own ability, temperament and aptitude. True education nurtures children's potential through teaching that fits their multifarious capabilities. Talent thus fostered becomes the lifeline of a nation. But the Independent High School Council, an advisory body to the Education Ministry, warns against licensing more independent high schools. The National Assembly has now passed a private school law infringing on their autonomy under the guise of eliminating corruption in some schools. Korean education has yet to emancipate itself from an ideology that sees standardized education, however stifling and uniform, as the only right way because it offers the same drab fare to everyone.