[Interview] Lee Gijae, Yangcheon District Mayor: "Y Education Expo Rises as Korea's Leading Education Expo in Just 2 Editions"

Another Classroom Outside the Classroom: Achievements and Future Development Plans of 'Y Education Expo 2024'... "Continuing Innovative Educational Policies Unique to Yangcheon, Leading Korea's Future Education as a Happy Education City"

"Learning is not confined to the classroom. Especially for children living in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, they can learn and grow more outside the classroom, so future education that nurtures children's dreams, curiosity, and creative thinking must be diverse even outside of school."

Yangcheon District Mayor Lee Ki-jae stated this as the reason behind the successful hosting of the second nationwide 'Y Education Expo 2024' held from the 16th to the 18th.

Since taking office, Mayor Lee has judged that the way to enhance the urban brand value and competitiveness is to utilize and develop Yangcheon’s strength as an education-specialized city. With the goal of becoming a happy education city, he has been fully committed to expanding educational infrastructure throughout Yangcheon. As a representative effort, to firmly brand Yangcheon as the 'Representative Education City of Korea,' he hosted a nationwide differentiated Y Education Expo last year, which no other basic local government had attempted, and this year expanded its scale to achieve a successful establishment.

Mayor Lee said, "The Y Education Expo was planned with the purpose of collectively considering and seeking solutions for how Korea’s future education should proceed amid the crisis in public education, the expansion of the private education market, social problems, and rapid technological advancements." He also stated, "For students, parents, and educators facing a new educational environment, Yangcheon District will serve as a model by preparing what basic local governments, which are most closely connected to residents' lives, should do."

The second Y Education Expo this year, themed "Meeting the Classroom Outside the Classroom" in the era of ultra-convergent Big Blur where boundaries between industries are blurred, transformed the area around Yangcheon District Office into a massive campus. It featured a total of 24 programs across six fields, ranging from future advanced experiences to entrance exam, academic progression, and career planning, as well as star mentor lectures. Mayor Lee self-assessed, "The bold integration of differentiated content not seen in other education expos was a key factor in its success." In fact, over the three days, about 53,000 citizens including elementary, middle, and high school students, parents, and teachers from across the country visited, receiving enthusiastic responses. It is being evaluated that Yangcheon, as an education city, newly realized an innovative learning space that transcended the limitations of the confined school environment.

The reason Yangcheon aimed to leap into a greater future through the "classroom outside the classroom" aligns with Mayor Lee’s repeatedly emphasized philosophy of "public education outside school." Mayor Lee has continuously argued that until now, local governments’ educational support was limited to budget allocation to schools, but in the future, the role of administration must expand. In other words, rather than a dichotomous view that public education is in schools and private education is outside schools, if the limitations of school public education are acknowledged and the practical difficulties of school education are supplemented by local governments through public education outside schools, the level of public education can be improved and private education reduced. Therefore, through this Y Education Expo, a chance was created to share and newly build the image of another classroom outside the classroom.

Mayor Lee cited the Y Education Forum co-hosted with EBS as the most memorable program. The forum, themed "People Who Become Their Own Classroom in the AI Era," featured four renowned domestic scholars including Professor Choi In-soo as the chair. It involved in-depth discussions and Q&A sessions on how to create self-driven learning motivation, creativity, brain cognition understanding, and human-AI interaction.

Mayor Lee showed keen interest by asking attending experts about the newly required roles of teachers in digital future classrooms and future relationships with students. Reflecting on the forum, he said, "The forum presented many points emphasizing that in the AI era, education should go beyond knowledge delivery to encourage self-directed learning and motivate curiosity. Through this, we reaffirmed the necessity of expanding 'public education outside school.' As an administrator, this will be a great strength in setting the right direction for future education."

Additionally, a career and academic progression expo, where current and former education experts provided strategies tailored to students’ tendencies for entrance exams, academic progression, and career planning, was held over three days with about 6,500 parents and students showing strong interest. Mayor Lee said, "The main purpose of holding the career and academic progression expo is to primarily alleviate vague anxieties caused by the rapidly changing educational environment in the public domain and provide timely useful information." He added, "From high-quality information on middle and high school entrance exams, university admissions, school-specific briefings, career counseling booths, perfect score talk sessions, to special lectures by star instructors, customized consulting will not only improve academic achievement but also help reduce private education expenses."

At the Future Education Expo, which was the most popular among students at this Y Education Expo, 25 booths offering experiences with advanced future technologies rarely encountered in daily life were fully booked early each day, attracting about 18,000 students and citizens. Mayor Lee said, "We incorporated innovative future science technologies that are difficult to experience at school, such as coding, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), and drones, so that people can feel the flow and changes of future technologies in the 4th Industrial Revolution era." He added, "Especially this year, with the full introduction of digital textbooks starting next year, we operated the AI-based Y Digital Class to allow early experience of future advanced classrooms."

On the last day, to make core fields of the 4th industry such as AI and drone technology familiar to youth in daily life, the nationwide ChatGPT English Speech Contest and the National Youth Drone Soccer Competition were held. Mayor Lee explained, "The global future education direction is to cultivate questioning ability. To nurture global talents equipped with critical acceptance of future technology, creativity, and logical thinking, the district held the nation’s first ChatGPT English Speech Contest."

This year, a lifelong learning festival covering all generations from infants to seniors was held for three days under the theme "Generational Empathy Harmony Shining with Learning and Sharing." Especially at the car-free street between Yangcheon Park, eight special performances including concerts and fusion lectures (lecture concerts), unique experience booths, and cultural and artistic performances, as well as ten experience booths, were held on an unprecedented scale. Various experience booths were so popular that reservation openings caused early morning rushes even before the 10 a.m. program start. The newly introduced Kids Play Zone offered job experience programs like KidZania, providing tailored educational services for infants and lower-grade elementary students visiting the expo.

Mayor Lee said, "As the saying goes, learning never ends, lifelong learning will now become the main driving force leading our life’s growth and development." He added, "I hope it was a time of reflection to experience a new paradigm of lifelong education and to plan a second life." He also emphasized again, "A true education city is not a migratory education city where only students are educated and then leave, but a residential education city where anyone from children to adults can learn whatever they want."

Finally, Mayor Lee pledged, "We will expand the Y Education Expo every year with richer and more substantial content to grow it into an education expo representing Seoul and Korea, further enhancing Yangcheon’s brand value." He concluded, "We will continue innovative educational policies unique to the education city of Yangcheon and rise as a happy education city leading Korea’s future education."