Ctizenship Education of Secondary Schools in the United States The Meaning of Recent Reforms and Its Implications for Korean Citizenship Education

The purpose of this study is to examine recent reforms and changes of citizenship education secondary schools in the United States and to seek some suggestions for citizenship education in secondary schools in Korea. Since the main purpose of social studies education in schools is citizenship education, social studies education of schools is mainly analyzed for citizenship education. The writer was fortunate to have an opportunity to stay at University of California at Berkeley in the United States with financial assistance from Ministry of Education, Korea, for the study of social studies education for one year from January 1992 through January 1993. This study was made during that period by reviews of literature, observations on the U.S. society, field trips to schools,interviews and conferences with related people and experts. Such direct experiences were of great help for this study. The stream of postmodernism, spread of computers, violence, pleasure seeking social environments, criticism against positivism and individualism, increase of minority and demand for cultural pluralism were found as some of recent characteristics of the U.S. society. In order to cope with these problems, citizenship education of the U.S. secondary schools have been recently undergoing reforms emphasizing teaching of concepts, schemata and higher order thinking such as decision making, creative thinking, critical thinking, inquiry and metacognition in the area of cognitive education. Regarding value education in social studies, concerns with an ethic of caring and appreciation is rapidly growing along with character education. It is very impressive to observe that these types of value education are replacing the place of value clarification approach or even Kohlberg approach in moral and value education, which have been so influencial in both the U.S. and Korean schools for the past few decades. Such changes and reforms of the U.S. citizenship education in secondary schools seem very timely, appropriate, and desirable educational efforts to bring societal progress and happy lives of the people for the 21st century. Considering Korean situation, the emphases on concept and schemata teaching, high order thinking and an ethic for caring and appreciation seem all positively applicable to Korean schools in basic directions, but they should be different in specific methods. Classrooms of Korean schools are overerowded, virtually making impossible teaching of higher order thinking or any other important instructions by discussions. Therefore, Korean schools must seek some type of small group works or group discussions. Also, Korean schools are expected to develop ethics of caring and appreciation in accordance with the tradition of Korean culture and history, such as respect for humanity and cooperation. We have seen many examples in the past half century that the efforts to introduce foreign educatioanl theory and practice directly into Korea resulted in failure. It seems that the future success of Korean citizenship education largely depends upon how Korean schools develop their own teaching materials and methods with the reference to foreign theory and practice.이 연구는 1992년도 교육부 해외파견 연구교수 연구비에 의하여 이루어졌음