Seoul Superintendent Jo Hee-yeon proposes “Let’s put labor education in the national curriculum”

On the 6th, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education proposed an agenda to strengthen labor education when revising the national curriculum next year to the Council of Provincial Superintendents of Education. When the agenda is passed at the general meeting of the Superintendents’ Council on the 13th, an official proposal will be made to the government.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education proposed to include’human dignity’ and’respect for labor’ as values ​​to be pursued in the national curriculum revised next year. It was also suggested to strengthen the weight of the value of labor in a number of subjects as well as a specific subject. It argued that the current career and vocational education that focuses on employment and aptitude development should also be shifted to the perspective of labor rights.

The national curriculum is the basis for deciding textbooks and class content for kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school. Where labor is emphasized in the curriculum, relevant content is included in each subject.

An official from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said, “Even though activation of school labor rights education is a state-run task, the value of labor has not been properly reflected in the curriculum until now.” “Do” he said.

According to the education world, labor-related education is currently conducted in many schools in the form of inviting external instructors. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education believes that systematic education can be achieved if labor education is included in the national curriculum.

Such a proposal is likely to be positively reviewed by the General Assembly of the Council of Superintendents, where there are many progressive superintendents. Currently, 12 out of 17 metropolitan and provincial offices of education are implementing the’Labor Human Rights Education Revitalization Ordinance’.

Seoul Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said, “We must ensure that labor rights education can be properly settled in the next national curriculum.” I look forward to it.”

If labor education is included in the national curriculum, there may be controversy over the direction.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has attempted to strengthen labor education by itself, such as producing labor rights textbooks for high school students for the first time in the country in 2019. Last year, it distributed labor rights instructional materials for elementary and middle school students, respectively.

However, some voices pointed out the bias regarding the materials distributed at the time. In particular, the textbook distributed to the specialized high school introduced the strike procedure and described it as’It is so difficult to strike once in Korea’, and was criticized for being out of balance with the position of the user.

Reporter Nam Gung-min [email protected]