Christian School

Background

A Christian school is a private school founded by a Christian body for missionary purposes. Such schools are often called mission schools, a term that can also refer to religious schools in general. This article deals primarily with Protestant schools in Korea, where the term usually refers to Christian schools. Because Korea has no state religion, all such schools there operate as private schools.

In the late nineteenth century, the government of Joseon Korea, as part of its efforts at modernization, permitted Western missionaries to carry out educational and medical work. This permission is reported to have been granted in 1884 under King Gojong, after which Christian schools began to be founded in earnest.

Development

With the arrival of Protestant missionaries, Paichai Hakdang opened in Seoul. It is commonly regarded in Korea as the first Christian school in the country. Other Christian schools, including the girls' school Ewha Hakdang, were subsequently established in Seoul and in the provinces.

During the Japanese colonial period, many Christian schools in Korea continued to operate under the legal and financial management of missionaries. Some in the Korean Christian community hold that, as a result, these schools were comparatively less subject to Japanese interference and that students and church members used them to prepare for the independence movement.

Results and Influence

The early Christian schools in Korea contributed to the spread of Hangul literacy, women's education, and modern learning. They also produced many national leaders and independence activists. People formed in these schools and churches went on to play important roles in many areas of modern and contemporary Korean history. Some also argue that during the Japanese colonial period these schools served as a channel through which Koreans encountered the culture and learning of the wider world.

Today, Christian schools in Korea are fully accredited schools authorized by the Ministry of Education. Their distinguishing features, compared with other schools, are commonly identified as follows:

• They offer Bible classes.
• They hold worship services or chapel assemblies (brief worship gatherings held at school).
• Many of their teachers are Protestant, and they employ a school chaplain responsible for the school's religious education.

In other respects, their curricula are the same as those of other schools, and their students and staff come from a variety of religious backgrounds.

Assessment

Within the Korean Christian community, Christian schools are highly regarded for having pioneered modern education, served as a base for the national movement, and taught democracy and individual human rights.

At the same time, controversy over religious freedom has persisted. Christian schools also enroll students who have no religious faith or who belong to other religions, and critics argue that requiring such students to attend worship services or religion classes infringes on their religious freedom. The most frequently cited case is the challenge raised by Kang Eui-seok, a former student council president at Daekwang High School in Seoul. He later directed Mission School (2015), a film about religious education in schools, produced by the Institute for Religious Freedom Policy and Human Rights Solidarity.

The schools and the churches, for their part, regard religious education in keeping with a school's founding purpose as central to the identity of private Christian schools. How to uphold both students' religious freedom and a school's founding principles remains a matter of ongoing debate.