Value of trained historical understanding

By Kyung Moon Hwang

Readers of this column probably know that I disagree with some common historical perspectives in South Korea, which I find to be overly nationalistic. Very few scholars, much less non-scholars, have stepped outside this box of considering Korean history primarily as "national history."

What I do not object to, however, are the qualifications of the scholars who pursue research and shape, in turn, the larger public view. Professional historians are academically trained, learning how to engage critically with documents and historical narratives.

Just as one would expect physicians to have gone through medical school before being allowed to practice, people who determine how history is understood and taught should be trained in the historical sciences.

This is what is so alarming about the government's decision to "nationalize" secondary education history textbooks: The Park Geun-hye administration and its political allies, very few of whom, if any, have received academic training in history, have decided that they know history better than professional historians.

Instead of the several government-approved, privately-published textbooks that are currently available from which to choose, beginning in 2017 there is to be only be one book, written by government-appointed authors.

Of course the background of this confrontation and the historical issues involved are very complex. The motivation for the current drastic and inflammatory step, however, seems straightforward: The ruling party politicians, with an eye toward the 2016 general election and the 2017 presidential election, see this as a way to mobilize their voters.

Admittedly, this is not a new phenomenon, but rather part of a longstanding backlash against what conservatives see as a strong leftist turn in the conventional historical perspective. They find legitimation in a small group of conservative historians who see the now orthodox historical understanding as having been influenced too much by socialist thought and the experience of resistance against South Korea's dictatorships.

For many reasons this conservative, "alternative" historical view has not gained a lot of followers in the academic realm. Nor has it won over the history teachers in public schools, who have made their preferences clear in rejecting it. (When it first appeared a few years ago, the one conservative textbook for "national history" was plagued by amateurish mistakes, among its other faults.)

So in a bit of irony, conservative politicians, who generally favor letting the "free market" dictate the greater good, are now trying to circumvent this market with simple political force. After having failed to convince academic historians and history teachers who have resisted the government's intervention, these politicians, in the name of "democracy" and "balance," now must deny the merits of those with professional, specialist training in history.

This kind of behavior is not limited to South Korea, of course. The government of North Korea, too, insists on a single, government-dictated historical perspective.

Admittedly, this is an extreme example, but the parallels should not be dismissed, as this kind of state-imposed intellectual uniformity is inherently undemocratic and, to add to the irony, had characterized the past South Korean dictatorships. Not surprisingly, the old red-baiting has again been deployed to justify this current decision.

Further lessons come from the United States, which allows state and local school boards to choose textbooks. In many areas of the U.S., these school committees have been turned into battlegrounds by parents and politicians who wish to inject "competing" views that disregard the expertise of specialists.

As with Korean conservatives, they often object to the portrayal of the nation's history as being too negative, with its coverage of the extermination of native Americans, as well as of the brutality of slavery and of legalized discrimination in America's past. Those who criticize this now widely-accepted narrative want a more "positive," whitewashed presentation that would strengthen students' pride in their country and historical figures.

But this is a stunningly juvenile approach to education that no self-respecting historian in a functioning democracy could agree with. In this regard, one wonders how many conservative Korean historians will actually risk their academic credentials to join the government's laughably autocratic "writing team" for the new textbook.

The most egregious examples from the U.S., however, are the struggles over the teaching of evolution. As most Koreans understand, evolution is the foundation of biology and other sciences, including medicine. But a shockingly large number of Americans still believe that this scientific principle should be overridden by religious beliefs on the origins of life and the age of the earth.

That this kind of debate is still taking place in the 21st century says a lot about contemporary America. One of them is that scientists are often not trusted if their findings, such as climate change, seem to go against certain ideologies, doctrines, or economic interests.

Such disdainful disregard for trained specialists makes a mockery of schooling by suggesting that, while education might be important, the knowledge and understanding gained from education are not. But ignoring the realities of the nation's past is not going to improve things.

If South Korean conservatives truly wish to challenge what they see as the leftist domination of historical understanding, they should let rightist academic historians take the lead, by teaching their students, debating their colleagues, and better writing their own textbooks. Having the government override this democratic process by discarding the input of specialists never leads to good results. Look at North Korea.

Kyung Moon Hwang is associate professor in the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea ― An Episodic Narrative" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Korean translation was published as 황경문, "맥락으로 읽는 새로운 한국사" (21세기 북스, 2011).