earticle

영어

This article indicates features and problems in current history textbooks and concentrates upon problems revealed in description of the history of thought. Current history textbooks overcome a negative effect of uniformity which traditional government-designated textbooks had by developing more authorized textbooks. They also intend to make students look into Korean history in wider context of world history and stress practical aspects by focusing on modern history, which make significant changes in history textbooks. One of the features is that many teachers of middle and high schools actively participated as researchers and writing staffs and played a leading role for raising sense of realism. Despite these features and strengths, problems are not inconsiderable. That the part ranging from the beginning of our history to the fall of Joseon dynasty only occupies on third of a textbook is quite against fairness. Political and social history is mainly described in the ancient and medieval history due to its absolute lack in amount of description. The depth of description in study, thought, religion or culture is far behind that of traditional government-designated textbooks. It matters that width and depth of historical description varies according to researchers' and writing staffs' preferences and teachers lead in both writing and reviewing the textbooks. Above all, what matters the most is to limitedly describe the field of study, thought and culture. It is urgent to increase awareness in basic studies. Problems such as oppositive and dichotomous descriptive structure or description with unclear causal relationship or fact relevance are indicated to be overcome.