Thoughts on Public Education in Mathematics in Korea

Thoughts on Public Education in Mathematics in Korea

Personally, I was a generation that had the highest level of mathematics ever learned through public education up to high school. In 1969, the Apollo moon landing raised social awareness of science, and around this time, a complete set of science fiction novels was published for teenagers. The nation is also reconsidering the mathematics education that is the basis of science. As a result, the new mathematics curriculum, which has been in effect since 1973, is now at the highest level ever. I learned set and true-method transformation in elementary school, and I even learned to prove the limits of calculus in high school using the stereoscopic delta method. I learned vectors and matrices, as well as three-dimensional analytical geometry in science and mathematics.

Anyway, compared to the level of mathematics that I learned in my generation, the current level of mathematics has sadly decreased.

Some argue that only those who really need it can go to college to learn. However, the educational effect is different from what you've encountered at least once in the course of high school and learning in depth for the first time in college. (And if you learn in college, you have to pay high tuition.) So, I think it's necessary to get an easy level of access to a variety of mathematical topics in the public curriculum up to high school.

In fact, no matter what you do, it is useless in an educational environment where mathematics is neither taught as intellectual play nor useful applications in the real world, but is regarded only as a means of discrimination to distinguish between students' superiority and inferiority.

In this educational environment, reducing the number of topics covered in the math curriculum will not actually reduce the burden of learning, and on the contrary, it will only increase the number of painful problems for discrimination and lower the temperament about math. In addition, university professors are making new students think they don't know math well. In the end, I think it is making no one happy.

I have a way to overcome this problem in my own way. It's a way to make a lot of world-class geniuses come out of Hungary in the past. The basic idea is this. Let's try to induce competition in a very constructive way only if we can't eliminate competition anyway. I don't know if this will work in Korea's educational environment. After watching movies "Good Will Hunting" and "I Deny,"

1. For Christmas, my wife and I went grocery shopping and ate together. I drank a beer while watching "Home Alone," which my daughter said was a must-see movie for Christmas, and my small amount of alcohol led me to sleep without being able to withstand alcohol. Having gone to bed in the early evening, I woke up when everyone was sleeping and couldn't sleep. Even though I was learning Sleep and Circadian Rhythm Dystrophy (SCRD) while reading the book "Life Time," I thought that it was a moment when good habits on holidays broke down.

2. I turned on Netflix because I didn't want to see anything, and Netflix recommended me to the 1998 film "Good Will Hunting." In March 1998, I was serving in the military in Cheorwon, Gangwon-do, so I remember going to the video room and watching it after being discharged, but I think I fell asleep watching it because I can't remember the plot. Or maybe because I'm too old and I've learned a lot about it, the numerous topics in the movie made me nervous and excited.

3. There were many things that I wanted to stop and talk to people in every scene, such as child abuse, negative childhood experiences and trauma, behavioral disability, balance between academic achievement and humanity, counselor's posture, difficulty in forming rapport, importance of self-acceptance, true love, and the power of silence. Perhaps this is why Cha Seung-min started film education. It is because good movies awaken people's various emotions and the awakened emotions make them think again. I thought about how nice it would be to have a place to watch a good movie together and share thoughts every month.

4. I woke up late because I slept late. While I woke up late, my wife cleaned up. I felt sorry, so I organized my drawers, sharpened all the pencils I had collected during the holidays, and turned on Netflix again. Since it's Christmas, Netflix recommended a movie about the Holocaust related to Jews. Suddenly, I wondered how Israel would evaluate its history of dealing with the war after the war against Hamas. How they have treated Palestinians and how future generations would evaluate them.

5. Each event heightened the viewer's emotions, including a scholar studying the Holocaust, a person who denies the Holocaust, why he does not take the person directly to court, the way he or she conveys the victim's voice, why not all opinions are important, the attitude of historians and lawyers to respect each other, the awareness and respect for human dignity, the abhorrence and discrimination against non-disappearing humans, and how to fight racists or discriminators. Each story raised the viewer's feelings, and each story made him think about its cause and effect. It was a good movie.

6. Reading Skeptic No. 36's "Time Does Not Heal All Wounds," which deals with the importance of social relationships to understand and support wounds along with professional treatment when dealing with wounds of people who have experienced loss, it occurred to me that both "Shaun," a counselor who meets Will, and "Anthony" and "Richard," a lawyer defending Holocaust researcher "Deborah," have one thing in common as social relationships to understand and support those who have experienced trauma.

7. That's listening. I don't know. So with a desire to know, one side endured one session in silence and drew the client's utterance, and the other side read all the books written by the researcher and led the trial to victory. Empathy begins with listening, not with a stopgap measure. The counselor confronted the client in the counseling room in the way of the counselor, and the lawyer confronted the complainant in the way of a lawyer in court.

8. Watching David Irving say he is not a racist even though his little 9-year-old daughter sings a racist song, he sees a vulnerable inner side that refuses to admit his wrongdoing. Goethe's saying, "A coward only poses a threat in safe situations" suits him. Because he speaks out of court without hesitation what racists or antisemites like to protect him.

9. How will many Israelis, including Benjamin Netanyahu, evaluate their actions in the next 10, 20, or 50 years? Will it be Deborah Lipstadt's position? Or will it be David Irving? Wouldn't it be David Irving's position? In that sense, it seems quite difficult for reflection, view, and self-regulation to let you look at yourself far from here at the moment. So I think about what future education should teach.