ABSTRACT
While Giddens emphasizes public investment in education, his doctrine may sound quite congenial to South Korean or East Asian parents who have done their best to mobilize family resources for their children’s education, instead of exhausting them for their own or their children’s immediate material gratification. On the other hand, not many governments in these countries, although they may openly agree with Giddens, have a strong political basis for proposing the same policy line since they have not invested generously either in welfare or education.8 In South Korea – and in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and post-Mao China to varying extents – the social investment family has been fertilizing the social basis for sustained economic development. Educationally zealous families in East Asia, albeit not necessarily out of a social commitment to public education, have produced a collective effect equivalent to the social investment state. The family-centered nature of individual life and social structure in South Korea is widely known even among international observers. Under what may be called instrumental familism (see Chapter 2), South Korean families have striven to support their individual members in economic, social, and even political competition. A good family is supposed to function as a focal instrument for promoting its members’ success in society. The success of its members in society will, in turn, elevate the social status of the entire family. Mobilizing family resources for the educational achievement of children or parents themselves has been perhaps the most shrewd collective action for the many reasons to be subsequently explained in this chapter. In this context, familial investment in education became the most typical example of familial strategy for economic and social advancement.9 A phenomenal improvement in South Koreans’ educational attainment ensued in the latter half of the twentieth century, producing one of the best educated populations in the world (see Table 3.1 for South Koreans’ educational attainment levels). In June 2002, social investment families in South Korea were exposed to an interesting educational scandal in the United Kingdom. It was reported that two sons of Tony Blair, the then British prime minister, had taken private lessons from teachers of renowned private schools, igniting hot controversy in the political and educational domains.10 The two sons, enrolled in a public school, had taken private lessons in history for the preparation of college entrance examinations. Politicians from the opposition party argued that this incident was a clear evidence on how untrustworthy Tony Blair was concerning the public education system. South Koreans were especially amused by the fact that a politician who was loudly calling for the social investment state as the kernel of his third way
politics had actually behaved just like South Korean social investment families extremely concerned about their children’s private lessons. Even in the UK, some people expressed sympathy for Blair’s parental concern, but such sympathy may have been far greater among South Korean parents.
