Abstract

Although actual numbers of school administrators and teachers involved in corruption and misbehaviors in education are few, they exert an important effect on many Korean parents and students directly or indirectly or indirectly. Therefore many researches and symposiums have been held recently to correct these phenomena. But the main theme of these efforts focus on the educational system and teachers. This article dealt with parents` misconceptions about education and the cultural basis which fosters these misconception. The distinctive characteristics of oriental culture might be summarized as collectivism and relation/situation-orientedness. The main features of Korean traditional culture may be characterized as collectivity, emotionality, shamanism and confucious tradition. Therefore in Korea the views, needs and goals of the ingroup are more important than those of oneself. In these cultural climate, Korean parents keep doing misbehavior on education although they themselves know it is not good. They think that other parents also misbehave, that doing differently from other parents may exert bad effect on their children, and that to pass the very competative entrance examination to university, they have to do their best economically. Therefore this article suggested that one of the best way of preventing misbehaviors and corruptions in education is to encourage parents` determination that they do not misbehave, even though others do. And, Korean culture should changed in the direction of putting emphasis upon individual`s needs and opinions so that traditional collectivistic value become harmonious with new individualistic value.