President Park Geun-hye’s state-authored history textbooks continue to spark controversy even after the Ministry of Education downscaled the plan. Internal conflict is escalating at the only school designated by the government to use the textbooks, starting this month.
The entrance ceremony for freshmen at the Munmyeong High School in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, had to be cancelled amid a protest over the school’s adoption of the state history textbooks. On the first day of the school year on March 2, some 150 students and parents held a protest demanding cancellation of the designation.
The parents’ committee claimed that the school principal had unilaterally applied for the school’s designation and filed an administrative suit with the District Court of Daegu demanding that the provincial education office cancel the designation. Some students have even chosen to move to other schools after the adoption of the textbook.
It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Education has wasted time and budget on textbooks that have only been scorned and rejected by schools and students. Park’s history textbook plan is one of her most unpopular policies and has been criticized within and outside Korea for her attempt to distort history education. But it is good for the students to come into contact with a range of textbooks so they can compare and think for themselves about how to view certain events in history.
Ultimately, it is not one or two textbooks that shape a student’s view of history given the endless sources available to students nowadays on and offline. The quality of teachers and how much they are committed to helping students obtain a balanced knowledge of history are more important.
The ministry has given schools the right to choose among existing and new textbooks, so school principals’ rights to choose should be respected. Since Munmyeong High School has chosen the new textbook, parents and students should give the textbooks a chance. The most important factor in deciding whether to keep the new textbooks or not should be what is best for the students. Their opinions should be primarily considered as the high school experiments with the textbook.