시민을 대상으로 한 헌법교육의 방향

Abstract

Constitutional education, which is composed as part of legal education for the legal education support laws is non-specialized education. Constitutional education is targeted to the public and originally, represents ‘social law education’. This kind of constitutional education is performed by the Ministry of Justice, Constitutional Court of Korea and the National Human Rights Commission. This paper suggests the direction for the objective, contents, subject and methods for constitutional education on the public. Constitutional education is the key to legal education for the legal education support law and the ideological goal of constitutional education can be called the embodiment of a democratic republic. The main contents of constitutional education are democratic citizen education and human rights education (or fundamental rights education). Democratic citizen education is for helping the understanding of basic democratic principles, but is also for responding to actual issues faced by a community. Democratic citizen education is in the same context as political education. Human rights education and fundamental rights education represents the understanding of human rights for citizens, as well as for improving knowledge on constitutional rights. Constitutional education can become a subject for one nation’s education, but at the same time, it has its limitations. From this perspective, there is a need to promote constitutional education from not only the Ministry of Justice, but also the National Human Rights Commission and private citizen organizations. In order to become constitutional education for the development of the constitutional culture, the education should not be limited to theories, but should be focused on problem-solving. It must also be education customized to the changes of the people living in the internet age. Through such constitutional education, a democratic republic must be configured.