Professionalism of the history teacher in high school

... is a provisional title of my future book that I want to write after finishing my doctorate program. 

However, I am not interested in drawing lines or setting boundaries between professionalism and amateurism. Nor do I want to argue at all that teachers who teach humanities including history should be academically professional, neglecting the role of guiding students' lives. What I am interested in is to develop the certain elements of professionalism in the job (studying and teaching) of humanities teachers, such as a high level of responsibility and autonomy in teaching and assessment. 

The reality is that South Korean history teachers, like teachers in other subjects, are just following the same direction as that of the study-aid books and workbooks in the private education market. In fact there are no differences between them. The direction is towards preparing their students to score high in the national exam that the students are supposed to take in their third year. Teachers often criticise education policies, complaining that the national exam has been distorting the education for students. However, it is more closer to a mere excuse of teachers in high school. 

In my views, the national exam is rather nearer to a real serious effort to make the distorted education back to normalcy. I remember that I was shocked to see history teachers who were eager to use the previous national exam questions even when students barely had time to understand or digest the things that they were taught, and to see history teachers who insisted to even adopt workbooks written by EBS as main text in class, instead of text books. In spite of such a striking difference in educational philosophy between them and me, I had no choice but trying to understand those teachers' thoughts. 

I admit that people should hold in high regard the principles of 'co-operation' or 'compromise' in their job. However, in reality, those principles may simply mean following the opinions of those who have power in inner politics of organisations, unless there is a firm consensus that each member should be able to exert their autonomy in their job. I think that, in South Korea, many secondary school teachers to date have not been fully aware of the necessity and importance of professionalism in their job. However, at least, humanities is the area that encourages free thoughts more than any other field does. In this sense, humanities teachers in high school can be a good model that shows secondary school teachers' professionalism, if they could perform their job with autonomy equivalent to their passion and responsibility. 

It is also our reality to face less investment in humanities research. But, such a reality is neither the first time in history nor a unique phenomenon in South Korea. Historically in any society, humanities has scarcely been a profitable area, unless it is related to certain political powers and given a role as a social authority, which I do not want and think even dangerous. Any way, in a society where humanities are threatened to withdraw from main research areas and to just remain as a teaching field, humanities teachers in high school may be in the best position to do research regardless of financial or social rewards. Besides, generally speaking, South Korean high school students are more intelligent on average than students in the same age in any other countries, let alone pupils in the UK. This can be ascribed to the harsh competition for entering the universities with higher reputation, but the motivation that students have is a precious social energy or social capital, as long as it is channeled to develop into constructive intelligence, which is the role of teachers. 

© 2016 Min Bae