유수원의 교육개혁론

Abstract

This study aims at uncovering the idea of Rhu, Soo Won's educational reform plan in 18th century. He was an ill-fated intellect in 18th century. But he wrote a magnum opus, named The Book of Dreamer(U-Seo, 迂書) which criticized the problem of Jo Seon dynasty and proposed some important measures. Above all, he considered educational reform as a key to solve the social disease of the time. The results are as follows. First, his plan based on the premise that the entire social problem arises from the inequality and the first step of solution is the transformation of educational system to work as an ability system. Second, Such an educational system must be controlled by a public agency, eg. central or provincial government. His assertion is that government should give a guarantee a fair competition in education, so weaken the social inequality. Third, technicalities of the plan included the management of the student quality, the installation of the educrat post(Je Hak, 提學), the reform of civil service examination system and the recruitment of able teachers. Fourth, the Chinese system, especially Ming's educational system was an important source of his plan. Such an approachment was different to the other reformists. It shows that the critical intellects began to survey other country's systems in addition to the classical and traditional models. And that means that a realistic ideas was strengthened at that time.