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What would be the important factors when you compare education systems between two countries?

Comparative education has been developed in various areas related to education in other countries. When we compare education system between two countries, we want to see differences (there are similarities as well but we more focus on the differences). However, the way to solve each problem depends on all different educational culture, politics, society, economic situation. ‘WHY AND HOW THESE FACTORS MAKE THE DIFFERENCES OF EDUCATION’ have to be and can be asked to these external factors.
Friedrich Schneider, called ‘a father of comparative education’ listed the factors that decide the characters of educational system.
In the past, the inner facts like learner’s height, eyesight, intelligence, etc has been highlighted to answer ‘what makes the differences?’. However rather than the factors inner school, the factors of outside school is more important. It can influence to inner factors and also becomes foundation to explain the inner factors.
In other words, study comparing foreign system on the material for building, the feature of blackboard, classroom environment, status of teachers, the salary of teachers, the situation how students are distributed by classes and schools, curriculum, time table, context of education, teaching methods, etc. can give us the basic data which can promote further comparative study but if just ends without further study, it is not more than descriptive facts.
For example, in Germany under the control of Hitler, elementary school focused on teaching math, middle school focused on teaching physics, and all schools focused on teaching history and geography. Although you show the data and write the good words, it becomes meaningless without the explanation about historical situation of Nazism, militarism and human race theory at that time.
There is another example from my experience. When I went to East-timor which is the youngest independent nation in Asia and one of the poor nations, I simply thought about their difficulties of education for shortage of money, poor infra and so on. However, the problem is more complex than I thought because of several back-ground. The school where I went to had only two text books for all students so teachers wrote the context on blackboard every time for students to read them. This situation comes from not only poverty but also political and historical situation that East-timor was colonized by the Portuguese. They still use Portuguese especially in official place like government. (It is the similar with Korea and Japan. We were also forced to use Japanese.) They were colonized for longer than us so they still use it and have to learn to work and live. The real problem is that they don’t have domestic press for text book. They have to import and the Portuguese has been so mean even though they can give them text books at low or reasonable price. That is why East-timor has only limited and very few text books especially in suburb. It makes their education system harder. Furthermore, the complex political and historical situation related to languages that they speak also makes education system difficult. (Tetum and Portuguese are national languages. More than the half of population speaks Indonesian especially for numbers and some word, English is also being taught in school. Furthermore, dialogue can be added) Even teachers are not practiced in the Portuguese so they have to be trained several times a year so they leave school for days. I still have no idea about curriculum, university education, school yearing of East-timor. Looking at and experiencing their education environment, I could learn that education system is not only related to administration, descriptive facts but also broad areas of society. Politics, history, economy. We must consider these factors to see the reality of education and to compare.

I think focusing on the purpose of education and education paradigm is one of the important factors to compare, as well. “Is education the strong factors for change?”, “Is education the reflection of inequality, which can happen through education system, of society?” “Does education help the maintenance of social situation?” To answer these questions, we can study on countries’ important values. For example, in Korea, education is for benefit other people(홍익인간). How Korea has administered education system? Elitism is originally for this idea in an effective and reasonable way so that better people can help other people. I think this is the reason why we chose to use scholastic ability test to list the people from the top to bottom. And education must be a purpose and well-being is a result from it. However, the reality is going to opposite way. Elitism is not anymore for benefitting other people and education is becoming a way to well-being not a purpose. Along this change, education system also has made bad effect–for instance, the problem of special-purpose high school, private education, etc. We can explain about it historically, culturally as I mentioned above.

Until now I have talked about the important factors when we compare education system between two countries. It is emphasized to consider external factors - Nationality, Geographical specialty, Economic, Culture, Science, Social group and politics , Religion, History , Influence from foreign countries, Inner development of education. We compare countries with these factors to answer what kind of education system, plan and teaching would be suitable for each society. That is to say comparative education helps to clarify the role of education, education paradigm, and education system for the development of individual and society and also make a chance to improve education because we learn from each other.