| As a curriculum research, this study focuses on meaning and perspective related to the present Korean public school curriculum. After a brief outline of the current situation of curriculum reform in Korea (Chapter I), a particular attention is paid to the two competing interpretations concerning the Seventh National Curriculum. The one holds the classical liberal position envisaged by John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, with the view of defending the individual and market forces in the new curriculum (Chapter II). The social-democratic ideals of Karl Marx and John Dewey, on the other hand, upon which a critical meaning proceeds, reveal the capitalist and elitist cause of the Seventh National curriculum that finds its reason in the Darwinian environment of the twenty-first century global market (Chapter III). Once a proportional discussion of the dual meanings of contemporary national curriculum in Korea is made, the study moves toward a future-related meaning, perspective. Accordingly, a lengthy discussion is provided of a Confucian vision for the twenty-first century, especially in regard to education; while examining T'oegye's neo-Confucian philosophy and the classical Confucian text of the Analects (Chapters IV and V). At the core of this attempt is the assumption that the East Asian Confucian tradition relying on the humanistic way, rather than the market measure, can be considered as an alternative to the dominant paradigm of our time---neo-liberal globalization. |
