Abstract
According to the Jogye Order’s 2018 periodic report, the average age of monks is increasing and the number of monks is decreasing. In order to offer solutions to these problems, the report presents and analyzes by dividing those themes into six sub-topics, namely: decrease of births; decrease of postulants; aging of postulants; rapidly changing educational environment; teaching aptitude of educators; education budget. The report lists a variety of information derived from the raw data and offers suggestions regarding these six topics. However, the report has several failings, as the research misunderstands the data at times, and their report does not present proper interpretations and concrete solutions. The final suggestions that the report proposes to increase the number of monks seem to be misguided and ineffective. This article critically scrutinizes the Jogye Order’s latest report to identify and correct some data misinterpretations and offer new insights that the authors believe would help our leaders come up with better solutions.
Highlights
Buddhist monks are suffering negative public perceptions in modern Korean society
A few years ago, a video clip of monks in the Jogye Order gambling while drinking and smoking at a hotel was released on the news
The violence and sex scandals of the Jogye Order monks were reported by a famous television program
Summary
Buddhist monks are suffering negative public perceptions in modern Korean society. As the media continues to report the moral corruption and sectarianism of the Jogye Order The public begins to view the Buddhist ordination more negatively To address this negative perception of the Jogye Order by society at large and facilitate comprehensive discussions to improve the Order’s educational system in line with the decreasing number of monks, the periodic seminar titled ‘A Study for the Improvement of Sangha Education of the Jogye Order’ The remaining topics focus on discussing the educational crisis of the Jogye Order. Various discussions in this article will offer a unique opportunity to highlight and critically analyze the challenging situation of the Jogye Order in the field of education. Our critical analysis of the report will reveal the fact that the Jogye Order does not have a clear understanding of the fundamental problems of its educational crisis. We hope that our critical review will help the community of the Jogye Order revisit the crisis in recruiting postulants so that it can come up with better solutions
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