ID :
35877
Tue, 12/16/2008 - 15:06
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/35877
The shortlink copeid
Seoul to continue controversial history lecture for high school students
SEOUL, Dec. 16 (Yonhap) -- Seoul's education office has earmarked funds to continue a controversial history lecture for high school students despite opposition by liberals, city councilors said Tuesday.
The lecture on Korea's turbulent modern history was one of several projects the
conservative government introduced this year to shift perspective away from what
it argues has been a "left-leaning" emphasis in education during the past 10
years of liberal rule.
Liberals and activists, including elderly women who survived Japan's sexual
enslavement during World War II, tried to physically block the first session held
in November, as speakers were mostly recruited from the country's right-wing
bloc.
City councilors said schools gave positive feedback despite the row and passed a
350 million won (US$255,661) budget for the Seoul Metropolitan Office of
Education to continue the special lecture next year.
"The city council set aside the budget because it's very important whether our
students view the 60 years since South Korea's foundation in a positive way or a
negative way," Kim Jin-sung, a councilor and former high school principal, said.
The conservative government of Lee Myung-bak, inaugurated in February, has
charged that current textbooks on modern Korean history play down the meaning of
the nation's foundation in 1948 while glossing over the problems of the North
Korean regime.
It says education should promulgate a more positive view of South Korea's first
president, Rhee Syngman, and shed light on economic achievements by the
authoritarian regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan.
Conservatives also call for a less critical view of the decision by the U.S. and
the Soviet Union to put Korea under their trusteeship following its liberation
from Japan's colonial rule at the end of World War II and a more straightforward
explanation about poverty and the dire human rights conditions in North Korea.
According to the 2009 plan, the lecture session will be titled "High School
Education on the View of the Nation," suggesting that it will focus on
ideological interpretations of modern Korean history rather than on a wider range
of social subjects covered in November.
The list of speakers for the upcoming lecture series has yet to be announced. The
November session recruited outspoken right-wing scholars like Park Hyo-jong, an
ethics education professor at Seoul National University and co-chair of Textbook
Forum, which initiated the ideological attacks against the current textbooks, and
Lee Dong-bok, chief of the North Korea Democratization Forum.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has instructed school textbook
publishers to revise content for the next academic year starting in March.
Authors of a major history textbook by Kumsung Publishing Co. have requested a
court injunction to prevent the publisher's revision without their approval.
hkim@yna.co.kr
The lecture on Korea's turbulent modern history was one of several projects the
conservative government introduced this year to shift perspective away from what
it argues has been a "left-leaning" emphasis in education during the past 10
years of liberal rule.
Liberals and activists, including elderly women who survived Japan's sexual
enslavement during World War II, tried to physically block the first session held
in November, as speakers were mostly recruited from the country's right-wing
bloc.
City councilors said schools gave positive feedback despite the row and passed a
350 million won (US$255,661) budget for the Seoul Metropolitan Office of
Education to continue the special lecture next year.
"The city council set aside the budget because it's very important whether our
students view the 60 years since South Korea's foundation in a positive way or a
negative way," Kim Jin-sung, a councilor and former high school principal, said.
The conservative government of Lee Myung-bak, inaugurated in February, has
charged that current textbooks on modern Korean history play down the meaning of
the nation's foundation in 1948 while glossing over the problems of the North
Korean regime.
It says education should promulgate a more positive view of South Korea's first
president, Rhee Syngman, and shed light on economic achievements by the
authoritarian regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan.
Conservatives also call for a less critical view of the decision by the U.S. and
the Soviet Union to put Korea under their trusteeship following its liberation
from Japan's colonial rule at the end of World War II and a more straightforward
explanation about poverty and the dire human rights conditions in North Korea.
According to the 2009 plan, the lecture session will be titled "High School
Education on the View of the Nation," suggesting that it will focus on
ideological interpretations of modern Korean history rather than on a wider range
of social subjects covered in November.
The list of speakers for the upcoming lecture series has yet to be announced. The
November session recruited outspoken right-wing scholars like Park Hyo-jong, an
ethics education professor at Seoul National University and co-chair of Textbook
Forum, which initiated the ideological attacks against the current textbooks, and
Lee Dong-bok, chief of the North Korea Democratization Forum.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has instructed school textbook
publishers to revise content for the next academic year starting in March.
Authors of a major history textbook by Kumsung Publishing Co. have requested a
court injunction to prevent the publisher's revision without their approval.
hkim@yna.co.kr
