The Education Ministry unveiled the draft of the state-issued history textbook. The ministry asserted that the purpose of the state-issued textbook is to make students have a balanced view of our history without leaning on a particular ideology. However, there is a huge protests toward these decisions these days among a lot of professors and the students and is being one of the most big controversies. These are the main reasons. First, the government should not monopoly with the education system. Should all the students learn the history which is interpreted by the government only? The former president, Park Jeonghee, father of president Park became the president by staging a coup but president Park tried to glorify him. However, the public are not the same. They see this incident as a dictatorship which is gained by the military. There can be so many evaluations or interpretations of historical incidents. There is no need for the government to unify all the contents of the history. Moreover, there is nobody who majored in modern history who participated in publishing the text book. Second, the new textbook put less emphasis on the activities of fighters. Is Aug. 15, 1948 the foundation of the Republic of Korea, or the ROK government? The new textbook states that it is the date of the foundation of the ROK. If so, we see the 1948 as the foundation of Korea like the new textbook, the soul of sacrifices and our ancestors who fought for independence during the Japanese colonial loses its legitimacy, as it is the same with ignoring the Constitution Law as it is informed in our Constitution law. It makes the fighters as the terrorists toward the Japanese. This is a pro-Japanese thinking and it makes the activities disparaged. Lastly, it is the freedom of education. The government says the biased education of history has to be corrected. However, their intervention is excessive. There are both right-wing and left-wing history textbooks published by the private enterprises. Through the original system, the students could choose the textbook and it has to be continued as it is the natural quality for them to choose what kind of book they want to learn. It is excessive intervention for the government and it is the violation of the freedom of education.
State-issued textbook system has been executed only in dictatorships in our history. The UN also warned that unifying the history textbook is a retrogressive process. Edward Hallett Carr, the writer of the book “What is history?” said “History is the share of the interpretation of history.” History should have a lot of perspectives and has a freedom to choose.