학교 인격교육의 재음미

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the meaning and reality of character education in schools. Cultivating students' good character is the one of main aims in school curriculum. According to the National Curriculum document, schools should carry out character education through formal curriculum. But in realities, character education is not carried out efficiently in schools today. The increase of school violence and juvenile delinquencies is regarded as evidence of school character education failure. So, the way of vitalization of schools character education should be discussed, especially character education through each subject education should be reconsidered. First, I clarified the meaning of school character education focusing on moral growth of each student. The concept of ‘character education' which is used widely in Korean education nowadays has ambiguity and vagueness in its definition, so it tends to hinder clear communication between educationists. And I analysed the problems of school character education policy and practices. Education policy makers usually focused in extra-curricular activities for school character education, on the other hand they ignored character education through subject education which is the core area of school education. Also, there are problems of character education through subject education in schools, such as knowledge transmission centered classroom teaching, disregarding character education in other subjects' teaching except Moral Education class, and not evaluating the results of character education through subject education. Recently, in order to vitalize school character education, many research & development projects were carried out and several improvement policies of school character education were proposed according to the results of the projects. These policy proposals related to the issues of school character education, such as change the meaning of school subject education, the relation between key competencies and character education, and the importance of teachers' character in classroom character education. In this paper, I discussed these school character education issues. In conclusion, in order to vitalize school character education, the meaning of subject education should be reconsidered in the context of each student's 'happiness' and 'good life'.