A teacher at a junior high school in Seoul who refused to submit answer sheets for a scholastic aptitude assessment test administered to seventh graders across the country last week is said to have turned in the papers only after parents went to the school to protest. The teacher, who is a former spokesperson for the leftwing Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union, reportedly induced his students not to turn in their answers, telling them the test was designed to rank them from top to bottom. As a result, only three out of 34 students turned in their answers. The other 31 filled in the answer sheets and gave them to the teacher.

The KTEWU has been opposed to any scholastic assessment conducted nationwide. It says such tests bring “psychological pain” to students, and heightened academic competition would damage their character. Around 50 countries including Korea take part in a global scholastic aptitude assessment test once every three years. That’s because we need to know where students stand in their ability, to come up with an effective curriculum. Last year, Japan revived nationwide scholastic assessment tests after 41 years. That’s because Japanese education officials realize that scholastic achievement levels declined after the test was scrapped to ease the burden on students. The KTEWU is stubbornly denying something that educational experts around the world recognize and value.

At one elementary school last year, 12 out of 46 classes said they never administered mid-term or final exams. That’s because the 12 KTEWU members leading those classes refused to administer the tests, saying it was wrong to rank students according to test scores. But while they rejected those tests, the teachers did not spend more time looking for better ways to educate their students. Rather than being concerned about the futures of their students, the teachers simply used them to test out their outdated ideological views. The teachers refused to answer calls to their mobile phones from the school principal and did not respond to summons through the school’s tannoy to see him.

Education officials are taking a hands-off approach, while the principal was unable to do anything. So the parents of the students need to take the initiative. Until now, parents had to quietly endure the tyranny of the KTEWU because they didn’t want teachers to vent their frustrations on their kids. But it is time for parents to step up. Parents who cannot choose which school their children attend or the teachers they study under must stay alert and prevent the KTEWU from brainwashing their children to look at the world from a distorted point of view.