My major is Education. Every student who belongs to the college of education has to do teaching practice when they are juniors and seniors. I went to a middle school to do teaching practice. Entering the school’s door, I felt a familiar feeling and expected the time when I was a middle school student. I learned important values such as wisdom of life and courtesy, which have affected my life and I felt teachers’ love for us at that time. However, the school’s situation was contrary to my expectation. There were many students who spoke thoughtlessly, and teachers couldn’t control their bad behaviors. During classes, there were some students who slept on their stomachs, but teachers kept giving their lessons without scolding them. That is, many teachers are considering their work as just giving knowledge to students, and they don’t have a sense of duty to make a child become a good person who can help society.
The position of Korean public education falls behind in competition with private education. Despite this situation, the reason why public education was satisfactory until now is that schools performed a special function that private education institutions couldn’t do. The function are educating students’ personalities such as teaching the method to cooperate with their friends and practicing good manners. These days, because of the development of the Internet, anyone can find all of the knowledge they want to know and can learn something through internet lectures. However, educating on basic courtesy, which is demanded by students during their lives, is only taught at home and school. Therefore, the special role of schools should be more important, and teachers have to consider their job as a vocation.
While experiencing teaching practice, I considered the future of Korean education. In addition, I thought that I am a lucky person because I can assure that I learned valuable things from my teachers who had a sense of duty about education. A Tibetan monk, Jongkapa, said, “Making a virtue and removing evildoing in disciples’ minds are teachers’ work. Because the roots of all happiness are sacred teachers, following them is very important in disciples’ lives.” As we can look at this sentence, it is needless to say about the importance of good teachers. Therefore, I hope that people who are preparing for the teacher recruitment examinations have great cause in education.