Society

National Textbooks



The Ministry of Education announced that they would start writing national textbooks in November 2015, and schools would begin using them in March 2017. National textbooks are textbooks that are written by nations in order to control the content. It takes at least two years to compile national textbooks, but they spent only one year and four months. Even the writers of the textbooks were not chosen when it began. In this situation, we cannot expect a good history textbook to come out.

Recently, these types of textbooks have caused a big controversy in Korea because they have many problems. Recently, four new students of Munmyeong High School in Kyungsan switched to different schools after they learned the school will use the national history textbooks. Moreover, all of the parents of Munmyeong High School students objected to the textbooks.

On November 28, 2016, the Ministry of Education revealed one of the national history textbooks with its one-sided perspective. The textbook vilifies anti-Japanese groups and glamorizes a dictatorial regime. For example, this textbook designates the anti-Japanese movement of Kim Koo as terrorism. Also, it is criticized for being a textbook that glorifies Park Chung-hee because his regime occupies nine of the 293 pages. The military coup on May 16, 1961, that former president Park Chung-hee launched to come to power is described positively as an unavoidable action, revolution, and challenge. Also, the content about the Yushin dictatorship, which he imposed, is full of stories that rationalize the dictatorship because of economic development and glamorize him. Also, the textbook exonerates pro-Japanese groups’ activities and achievements by saying that the Republic of Korea was founded in 1948. In this way, the national textbook glamorizes pro-Japanese groups and dictatorship.

The cause of this is that the government didn’t select the writing staff carefully. Among the writing staff, there was no one who majored in modern history. This means that laymen who are not schooled in history wrote the national textbooks. Ninety-nine percent of experts such as historians and history teachers object to the textbooks. Moreover, most of the writers are conservative. This makes the contents of the textbook politically biased.

Because national textbooks are generally politically motivated and one-sided, many people are opposed to them. Even the United Nations has spoken out against governments making national textbooks. Students have the right to learn unbiased history, so it is wrong to give them a one-sided history education with national textbooks.