The Process of Receiving Japanese-style ‘General Education’ and American-style General Education

Lee, Jung Oak

Korean Journal of General Education 2015;9(3):11-39.
Published online September 30, 2015.

Jung Oak Lee

일본식 ‘교양교육’과 미국식 교양교육의 수용과정

이정옥

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to review the history of the introduction of general education in Korea during the period from the Liberation to the present. The history of general education in Korea is divided into the period before the Liberation through the introduction of Japanese-style ‘general education’, and that after the Liberation when American-style general education was received. Japanese-style ‘general education’ was crooked into the state’s means to control people’s education and into ‘culturalism’ as capital scolaire comprehending a vast range of Western modern knowledge for social success. Modern Japanese ‘general education’ was introduced first during the process of founding Gyeongseong Imperial University in 1924 and formed the wrong base of Korean general education. During the period from the age of the American Military Government to the early 1960s, Japanese-style ‘general education’ and American-style general education existed together, and the trend of neglecting general education was fixed further. The ‘liberal arts education’ of pilot universities in the 1970s was utilized as a means of forcing the ideology of Yusin Dictatorship. The 1990s when university education was democratized and autonomized, was limited to the introduction of the distribution requirement. In the 2000s, plural systems such as core system, required electives, and general electives were adopted for the ‘realization of advanced general education.’ Nevertheless, it showed limitations such as similar forms among all the universities and focus of core subjects on improvement in basic abilities required by businesses. Through this paper, It was confirmed that the history of the introduction of general education is comparable to colonial architecture obsessed with the phantom of shadow as Japanese-style ‘general education’ and with the phantom of the original as American-style liberal arts education.

Key Words: general education, liberal education, people’s education, coloniality, phantom of the shadow, phantom of the original