ID :
20454
Mon, 09/22/2008 - 09:31
Auther :
Shortlink :
http://m.oananews.org//node/20454
The shortlink copeid
Seoul to remove leftist content from school textbooks
By Yoo Cheong-mo
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's government and ruling party are planning to carry out a sweeping revision of middle and high school textbooks this year to rid them of left-leaning contents, officials said Sunday.
The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration and the ruling Grand National Party
(GNP) will hold rounds of consultations over the following weeks to discuss how
to remove controversial leftist content in history textbooks and reshape middle
and high school curricula now heavily centered on English, Korean and math, said
the officials.
The first meeting on textbook revision is scheduled to take place later this
week, they added.
"The government has thus far resorted to technical mannerism in deciding what to
teach our children. In the case of history books, too, various academic theories
have been simultaneously imposed on the students," said a ranking GNP official.
"Instead, the young students should be given an opportunity to improve their
sound judgment of history and other subjects."
He noted the length of Korean, English and math classes could be readjusted
depending on the consultations between public and private textbook experts.
On Saturday, the Unification Ministry said the government will push to replace
the term "Sunshine Policy," which describes the previous liberal governments'
policy of engagement with North Korea, with the so-called "reconciliation and
cooperation policy."
In a related development, GNP lawmaker Kim Jang-soo, who served as defense
minister under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, disclosed Sunday that the Defense
Ministry steadily demanded an "objective" assessment of the April 3 uprising in
Jeju, described differently by the nation's conservative and liberal camps.
On April 3, 1948, residents of Jeju rose up to protest the rule of the U.S.
military government and the separate elections being held in the South, which
threatened to divide the nation. The uprising lasted for seven years, during
which nearly one-third of the island's population, or approximately 80,000
people, were killed on suspicions that they were communists.
The Defense Ministry has insisted that the Jeju uprising was a mutiny by armed
leftist forces, while the Roh administration glorified as martyrs the tens of
thousands of islanders who died while struggling against the U.S. occupation of
Korea in the late 1940s. Roh once personally attended a memorial ceremony of the
Jeju uprising in 2006.
"While I was serving as minister, the Defense Ministry repeatedly asked several
history-related government agencies to revise the definition of the Jeju uprising
as a mutiny by leftist forces, but all of them failed to respond," Kim said in a
telephone interview.
ycm@yna.co.kr
(END)
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's government and ruling party are planning to carry out a sweeping revision of middle and high school textbooks this year to rid them of left-leaning contents, officials said Sunday.
The conservative Lee Myung-bak administration and the ruling Grand National Party
(GNP) will hold rounds of consultations over the following weeks to discuss how
to remove controversial leftist content in history textbooks and reshape middle
and high school curricula now heavily centered on English, Korean and math, said
the officials.
The first meeting on textbook revision is scheduled to take place later this
week, they added.
"The government has thus far resorted to technical mannerism in deciding what to
teach our children. In the case of history books, too, various academic theories
have been simultaneously imposed on the students," said a ranking GNP official.
"Instead, the young students should be given an opportunity to improve their
sound judgment of history and other subjects."
He noted the length of Korean, English and math classes could be readjusted
depending on the consultations between public and private textbook experts.
On Saturday, the Unification Ministry said the government will push to replace
the term "Sunshine Policy," which describes the previous liberal governments'
policy of engagement with North Korea, with the so-called "reconciliation and
cooperation policy."
In a related development, GNP lawmaker Kim Jang-soo, who served as defense
minister under the Roh Moo-hyun administration, disclosed Sunday that the Defense
Ministry steadily demanded an "objective" assessment of the April 3 uprising in
Jeju, described differently by the nation's conservative and liberal camps.
On April 3, 1948, residents of Jeju rose up to protest the rule of the U.S.
military government and the separate elections being held in the South, which
threatened to divide the nation. The uprising lasted for seven years, during
which nearly one-third of the island's population, or approximately 80,000
people, were killed on suspicions that they were communists.
The Defense Ministry has insisted that the Jeju uprising was a mutiny by armed
leftist forces, while the Roh administration glorified as martyrs the tens of
thousands of islanders who died while struggling against the U.S. occupation of
Korea in the late 1940s. Roh once personally attended a memorial ceremony of the
Jeju uprising in 2006.
"While I was serving as minister, the Defense Ministry repeatedly asked several
history-related government agencies to revise the definition of the Jeju uprising
as a mutiny by leftist forces, but all of them failed to respond," Kim said in a
telephone interview.
ycm@yna.co.kr
(END)
