Direction for Improving the Educational Environment of Rural School Students in Korea

농촌학교학생의 교육환경조성 개선방향

This study attempts to review the present situations of rural schools in South Korea, to analyze problems regarding the educational environments for their students, and to present direction for improving toward better educational environments. All the data and information are based on using avaiable documents and personal macro observation and insights. The sharp decrease of rural population for recent decades has made lots of public schools unexceptionall much smaller by school number and students' number. Nearly five thousands of rural small schools have already been abolished and the rest are also endangered to be dosed. In order to tackIe such problem, the Government has been trying to provide rural students with better educational environment, but failed to attract them to stay in rural schools. Most of rural school students have poorer family environment, underprivilged school learning environment, and less civilized community environment. Those normal parents living in rural areas are likely to send their kids to urban schools for prior opportunities to enter better quality of higher level of schools and then the remained attending rural schools are those who live with grand parents or whose parents are very disadvantaged. The rural school teachers are teaching much less number of students compared to urban teachers, but their students are less achieved learners. Notwithstanding their abudant natural community learning environments, the rural school students are less making use of those resources and less benefited from more civilized life due to their underdeveloped community conditions. In order to improve such educational environments, incentives for young couples to safely reside in rural communities, incentives for better qualified teachers to preferably work for rural schools, better learning facilities for rural school students and for better vocational experiences, lifelong learning opportunities for all community people, and increased public support to rural development for rural people not to worry about their rural lives, need to be guarantyed.