This is not the title of a textbook that appears in George Orwell’s dystopian novel. It is the title of an actual history book that all secondary school students will be taught in 21st-century South Korea, beginning in 2017.
As astounding as it may sound, the South Korean government recently passed a ruling to mandate that all secondary schools endorse a single Korean history textbook, authored by the government itself. It has criticized the history textbooks currently used in secondary schools for being biased in favor of left-wing ideologies and pro-North Korean ideas, which it claims may instill a distorted view of history in students. President Park Geun-hye said: “The distortion of truth or history in the classroom must be corrected” and that “It is the mission of our generation to normalize history education.”
Despite widespread oppositions from historians, scholars, teachers, students and civic groups, the government pushed and finalized its decision.
The genesis of the government-issued history textbook dates back to the 1970s, when the former strongman president Park Chung-hee — who is also the father of the current president Park — ordered the Education Ministry to publish a national history textbook that highlights the accomplishments of his authoritarian regime to justify the coup d’etat in 1961. With the stabilization of democracy, textbook reform began in the early 2000s, and all secondary schools became free to choose any of eight history textbooks published by private publishing houses since 2011. The recent decision will be a reversion to the 1970s after a brief taste of freedom in classroom.
Ancient Greek historian Plutarch said, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” The current ruling of the government is an attempt to fill the minds of students with a version of history tailored by a group of government-appointed historians “in the dark room.” Instead, the goal of education should be to provide spark and tinder that will start a blaze of curiosity and passion in learning minds and lead to stimulating conversations and generative debates.
This metaphor leads me to reflect on my experience of history education in South Korea, which “kindled” a small fire in my mind. Amid the countless, mostly uneventful classes in my secondary school years, one class that I can still vividly remember is my middle school Korean history class — and the one day of that class diverging from the usual recitation of textbook lines.
In the beginning of that class, the teacher said she would “dig deeper” on something that had not been covered by the textbook much. Using her own slides, she presented rich documentation of Korean “comfort women,” young Korean girls who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The slides contained detailed descriptions of the atrocities, such as pictures of the comfort station during the war, and interviews with present survivors. In the textbook, which was still a government-issued textbook then, there was a single line about comfort women, which I might have otherwise glazed over mindlessly.
Although it was shocking and heartbreaking to learn about Korea’s tragic past, I was truly engaged in history class for the first time. With information from various sources, including claims made by Imperial Japan, records from other affected countries such as China and the Philippines, and oral testimonies by surviving “grannies,” history came into life. My classmates and I started talking about it; I became curious about the South Korean and Japanese governments’ current stances on the issue and did personal research on it. I became deeply interested in the issue and involved myself in several campaigns during college.
By introducing diverse perspectives on a critical moment in history, the class not only enriched my understanding of the issue and provoked deeper interest in it, but also changed my view of “history” — from a boring subject packed with dates and names to be memorized, to a dynamic, multi-dimensional collection of records and narratives that offers insights into the present. That realization gave me a refreshing taste of what a real education should be like.
My concern regarding the government-issued history textbook is twofold. I worry that one version of history narrated by a single group that has an interest in portraying politically charged historical facts and events will “distort” students’ historical view instead of “correcting” it, preventing students from developing critical and inquisitive minds to interpret the national past; I am also concerned that depriving a classroom of freedom to learn or teach will pose a great threat to democratic values in education. It will be a regression of education of the country, as well as its democracy.
The title of the proposed history textbook, “The Correct Textbook of History,” is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as one “correct” version of history without taking in voices from diverse perspectives, and thus, a “correct” history education cannot be achieved by a single textbook. As a deeply concerned former student of South Korea, I strongly urge fellow Korean students, as well as anyone who believes in the value of academic freedom and democracy in education, to voice their opposition to the endorsement of a government-issued history textbook. Big Brothering of history education will never “correct” the history itself.
-Fiona Lee
Ph.D. Student in Psychology
Contact Fiona Lee at fionalee ‘at’ stanford.edu.