[Hyeon-Young Kwon's Data Innovation] Now Is the Time for a Digital Education Spirit to Save the Nation

Innovation in Public Education Worldwide

Professors Transform into Learning Facilitators

Utilizing Various Software and Information Technologies

No Place for Replication-Type Talent Development

South Korea Also Takes Initiative in Corporations but Focuses Only on Short-Term Courses

Breaking Away from the Institutional Framework of Public Education

Comprehensive Reconsideration Needed for Future-Oriented Talent Development

At the dawn of the 20th century, Joseon, which had fallen behind, taught the children of the yangban class in Seodang schools. Even as Western missionaries introduced new knowledge, the public education system failed to reform, ultimately failing to cultivate a modern citizenry. As a result, during the Japanese colonial period, education aimed at producing imperial subjects was experienced as modern education, a humiliating reality. Although history has no "what ifs," had the Joseon government embraced modern education based on science and technology earlier and strived to enlighten the entire nation, the 20th century of the Republic of Korea might not have been marked by such bloodshed and suffering.

The 21st century is maturing. The world is plunging into a digital economy, and industrial society-type talents can no longer survive in this competition. To win this competition, the race to nurture new talents is intensifying. These changes are happening first in advanced industrial countries. Even in the United States, home to the world's most competitive universities, and in South Korea, the number one country in digital transformation potential, changes are already underway. The outdated framework of industrial society-type talent development is being boldly discarded, and experiments?if not experiments?aimed at cultivating future-oriented talents are being realized in reality.

Minerva University, which started in the United States in 2014, is a university without official lectures. The first year is spent focusing on four virtues: effective communication, critical thinking, imagination, and mutual exchange. In the second year, students live in global cities and learn independently through internships at global companies. Professors are world-class scholars but do not teach; they only assist students' learning. Classes consist entirely of discussions and collaboration. In France, there is Ecole 42, a university for computer languages and programming. It is a three-year program open to anyone. Similarly, there are no classes, lecturers, or classrooms?only educational support staff. Through a global campus network, there are 22 campuses in Europe, 8 in Asia, 3 in the Americas, and 3 in Africa, including the ‘42 Seoul’ campus in South Korea.

Finland is famous for such innovation in public education. Since 2006, Finland has been promoting the Dream School project. It features a public-private partnership involving national financial support and participation from local small and medium-sized enterprises. The core is that teachers transform from instructors to learning facilitators, and the use of various software and information technologies is common.

The most striking aspect of these changes is the emphasis on not teaching. While industrial society required standardized personnel, the future society needs creative talents. People who discover or define problems are needed more than those who simply solve them. Knowledge and solutions can be replaced by artificial intelligence or digital technologies. Realizing this, the focus of all educational innovation is placed on ‘the learners themselves.’ Replication-type talent development, where teachers or professors teach and students merely imitate, has no place in the future.

South Korean companies have also stepped forward. The Samsung Youth Software Academy offers software education to four-year university graduates. They teach coding for a total of 1,600 hours annually from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., taking responsibility for review as well, with free tuition and a monthly stipend of 1 million KRW. The employment rate of graduates at global companies like Samsung Electronics is so high that private education to enter this program has emerged. That is not all. ‘Woowa Tech Course’ by Woowa Brothers, the operator of Baedal Minjok, Naver’s ‘Boost Camp,’ Kakao’s ‘Kakao Brain Pathfinder,’ KT’s ‘KT Able School,’ and Apple’s ‘Apple Developer Academy’ in partnership with POSTECH are also carrying the hopes of young people.

What differentiates South Korea from the United States, France, and Finland is the focus on short-term skills driven by immediate needs. Of course, all these Korean cases are short-term courses designed to supplement the lacking functions of public education. The background of companies directly stepping in to solve the difficulty of securing development personnel they urgently need is understandable.

Then, let us think with a long-term perspective. South Korea is a country with a high passion for education and a university enrollment rate competing for first place in the OECD at 70%. It spends 20 trillion KRW annually on private education, yet even after graduating from university, people must learn more digital skills to be useful in the field. What is going on? It is time to honestly reflect. If everyone competes to solve the same problems with the same thinking, soon machines will take their place.

Soon, artificial intelligence (AI) or machines made in other countries may come and take over our lives. Yet, will we still stubbornly cling to the subjects we teach or the methods we use, surviving only by stamping within the institutional framework of public education? In a country where even the students who will enter schools have not yet been born, how long will we remain complacent with the vested interests of the education system?

It is time to comprehensively reconsider the nation’s talent development function with an extraordinary resolve to save the country through education. Strengthening coding education or adding AI practice is not enough. The framework for digital innovation education must be newly designed across public education in elementary, middle, and high schools, universities, corporate education, lifelong education, and raising awareness in local communities. I earnestly hope that we move away from the perspective of educators or education providers and focus on learners and future people. It is not too late to start the path from a country that teaches what it wants to teach to a country where people can freely learn what they want to learn.