Career Advising

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High schools in Korea are trying to encourage students to decide their own future careers instead of just urging them to advance to college.

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Students form groups of three or four to express objects with their bodies. They write free-style essays on the importance of daily routines. This class teaches students how to express themselves in various ways and find on their own what they really like and excel in.

[Soundbite] Kyeong Ji-su(10th Grader) : "Consideration of a career tends to involve only the colleges I want to go to or majors and jobs I want to have. But this class allows me to discover what I really like doing."

Another high school asked its students to imagine their future selves and the students came up with unique answers on their own.

[Soundbite] Jeong Jun-gyo(Moonil Girls' High School) : "The basis of career education is understanding oneself. If experience is accumulated later on, students will be competent enough to deal with any changes in the future."

Starting this year, the so-called "career education intensive term system" is being test-operated in select schools. The Ministry of Education plans to expand this new career counseling system to 1,000 schools over the next five years before deciding on whether to include the program in regular curricula.