일제 초기 사립교육령과 독일 선교사들의 실업교육 활동

Abstract

At the beginning of the colonial rule, the ‘easy and practical knowledge’ represented the intellectual system that corresponded to technical training below secondary school level. The 1910s saw the prohibition of ‘conceptual knowledge’ and the structuralized dissemination of the lower level ‘technical knowledge’. In this sense, it was a preliminary period of technical labor supply for the colonial industrialization. During this period, commonly known as the ‘colonial unenlightenment’ policy, German missionaries fostered manpower for manual labor at the Soong-gong Technical School with a view to forming middle-class believers who could manage a self-reliant economy. In doing so, they hoped to increase the social influence of Catholicism and thereby render the Church more attractive to the masses. The colonial education system relied on a policy of prioritizing public schools and controlling private schools, while religious education was ultimately abolished, neutralizing the educational work of missionaries. Nonetheless, the level of repression was somewhat adjusted and technical training was still tolerated at the end of middle school. But in regard to social expectations, technical training could only amount to alleviate social discontent by expanding short-term work training. Instead of giving up on Koreans’ higher education, German missionaries focused on improving the quality of technical education and worked out a plan to expand its scale and reinforce manpower. The training method consisted of an intensive, practice-oriented apprenticeship to form technicians capable of self-reliant economy. One was qualified as skilled worker after completing the 3-year apprenticeship and passing the examination that concluded the system, cost calculations and practical manufacturing. The apprenticeship training provided by the German missionaries implicitly promoted ‘self-reliance’ more than any slogan and deviated from theoretical education, which was tightly controlled within the colonial order. The technical knowledge of hard-working craftsmen is a type of ‘conceptual knowledge’ transferred through practice and internalized through hands rather than expressed through texts, as well as an intangible asset achieved through life. Amid the various elements of repression under the colonial education policy, Soong-gong School was able to maintain its name. However, with the aftermath of World War I and the new missions that came along the establishment of Wonsan Diocese in 1920 Soong-gong School was abandoned. The German missionaries’ efforts to promote technical education based on industrial apprenticeship and emphasis on self-reliant craftsmanship could serve as an alternative case study when looking into this early colonial period such knowledge and industrial education remained as a very low level.