“They are Westerner and their culture is more open-minded than us, so we have to understand.” “Japanese like animation, so they are all otaku.” When you meet foreigners in Korea, what the image of them do you recall in your mind? Don’t you have embarrassing experience because of your thought of them? Many people in Korea already know some universal and unique features which other countries have. These ideas, however, don’t come from accurate information or experience. Most of them are derived from stereotype which the media shows and people believe the aspects of each country as it shows. Especially, teens received what they see and encounter with non-filtering, so those concepts about other countries affect teens greatly without criticism. The misunderstanding about other culture leads to great gap from reality and it causes big problem: stereotype. Therefore, Korean middle school’s regular curriculum ought to include foreign culture subject and the high school’s should include enrichment program about culture subject for establishing own identity, avoiding error, and developing idea.
The first reason the high school curriculum should contain culture study subject is that the accurate understating of own culture is one of the important ways to comprehend “culture” which is the best method of figuring out each country. “Each consciousness pursues the death of the other,” George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a famous German philosopher, wrote. It means that to define myself and our group, it is necessary to compare others. The culture part has the same way to define, as well. To establish our own cultural characteristics strictly, it is the best way to find out differences from other countries’ cultural features. Korean students can learn Korean culture’s unique traits and attribute by learning other countries’ culture. Also, this can be a good way because Korean students who don’t have pride of Korea due to the cultural toadyism can have self-esteem to their nation, Korea, by obtaining Korean endemic culture.
Furthermore, teaching culture study to high school students keep them from growing stereotypes of other countries’ culture. Most of the media shows various stereotypes of Western, Middle Asian, and even Africa. Even many documentary films, the program which conveys only the truth without dramatic fiction, deploy the stories by using certain stereotype. Teens who are exposed the media thoughtlessly accept what the media say and they begin to build their own idea about others by using the only information which the media produce. This is the problem because the concept which teens form affects them until they become adult. Seung-Woo Go, professor of Journalism and Mass Communication in Korea, said that it is important to educate the teenager from indiscriminately accept foreign culture by the media. Through the school class, teachers produce wrong and right part of media’s expression of other countries and students can learn what is true and false about their concept of others. Therefore, the school -especially the middle school- has responsibility to teach students who are teenager cultural field as a subject to protect them from wrong ideas’ development.
Moreover, the students advance their thoughts by getting exact idea of own culture and other culture. There is famous saying in Korea: If you know your enemy and yourself, you can win every battle. In Korea, however, two sayings are accepted as general. First idea is that it is enough for students to learn what is right and wrong till they are in the high school. The other one is that it is enough for students to learn various sights of the same situation from the university. Also, Dae-Hyun Song who is the professor in Catholic University of Korea, said that the biggest difference between education of the elementary school to the high school and education of university is this: making a discrimination between right and wrong and making a own idea about the same situation. This idea leads people to think that it is satisfactory to teach high school students only the words and logics about culture such as cultural relativity, imperialism, distinctiveness or universality.
In my perspective, teaching the condition’s right and wrong is enough till middle school students. More specifically, I believe that the high school students already know what is false and true through 9 years’ education and they have the enough ability to build their own view. For example, the current major curriculum of Society in the middle and high school follow the basic and enrichment program. In the middle school, the students learn Society in general. After that, the Society separate 11 kinds of subject such as Korean Geography, Law and Society, and Economy in the high school. Through many kinds of the detailed subjects, the high school students learn thorough part of Society. What’s more is that they can share and integrate different part as one path in the each class. Therefore, I insist that teaching culture subject totally in middle school and then teaching the detailed subject such as Western Culture, Middle Culture, or African Culture in high school are the great way to make the students understand more specifically about culture and grow creative and critical idea about culture. The advanced concept about own culture and other culture heads to make positive change of Korean culture.
The Korean Education system has been experienced lots of changes, but it always draw a line that “culture” don’t have value to learn in school. So, the students who want to study culture cannot have chance to learn it except entering university. Even though the Korean students can learn about culture as an academic course in university, new concept and idea of culture sometimes makes the students confused and gave up to understand owing to shortage of knowledge about culture. So, the culture subject in the middle and high school deserves to teach for the students because it helps them to have strict identity of Korean culture, form right idea of other counties’ culture, and go forward to good change of Korean culture by integrating.