The Public role of school teachers in Korea: For its conceptual reconstruction through its historical tracing

Abstract

This paper makes a bold attempt to make sense of contemporary Koreans’ common expectation of the educational role of public school teachers by tracing its historical and cultural roots to the neo-Confucian humanistic tradition of the Joseon dynasty in Korea that lasted for about 500 years until Korea began to modernize in the late nineteenth century. In this attempt, the key concepts to be explored as equivalent to the Western idea of ‘liberal learning’ are the Confucian ethics of ‘learning for oneself’ and its relation to schooling and teaching. The discussion focuses on whether and how this ethics of learning can be recovered in such a way as to accommodate the postmodern condition of our society, as the educational legacy of the humanistic tradition of East Asia that can keep the public spirit alive in (post-) modern schooling.     

A new formulation of the ethical self through kierkegaard’s notion of subjectivity: in search of a new moral education

This paper examines in detail the distinctive features of Kierkegaard’s notion of subjectivity in an attempt to find a new theoretical formulation of moral education; that is, a self-regarding—as opposed to an other-regarding—ethics of moral education. Heavily relying upon an existentialist line of ethical questioning, my aspiration underlying this investigation is not presumptuous in claiming that the self-regarding approach to moral education can—or should—compensate the other-regarding one. For it reveals an ethically non-trivial aspect of human subjectivity which has been overlooked by dominant approaches to moral education, like the moral reasoning and care-ethics models, in such a way as to suggest a way of diagnosing the moral predicament in the contemporary (Korean) society.     

Critical thinking, education, and postmodernity: Possibilities and limitations for moral education

The contemporary educational discourse on critical thinking, as one of the primary aims of education. has been divided into the spheres of modernist defense and post-modernist criticism. Critical of both positions, this paper attempts to find a new way of employing critical thinking, especially for the purposes of moral education, by drawing on Bernard William’s concept of “ethical reflection.” It will be shown that employing critical thinking for the fostering of ethical reflection in our young students can lead them into an “understanding” of ethical, rather than “ethical knowledge,” which enables them to properly deal with moral relativism in a culturally pluralistic society. This paper then explores the educational possibilities presented by Socrates’ teaching method as an example of this employment, though not without consideration of the attendant educational limitations and dangers.