Tolerance is a basic concept of liberalism and pluralistic society. It is also a strategic value for democracy and peaceful coexistence. While in modern western society tolerance has been considered as an important virtue, in korea it isn`t considered...
Tolerance is a basic concept of liberalism and pluralistic society. It is also a strategic value for democracy and peaceful coexistence. While in modern western society tolerance has been considered as an important virtue, in korea it isn`t considered as an important virture. Therefore, it is urgent to provide a curriculum for tolerance education and to implement it. This study, as a preparatory stage, will investigate how much the current textbooks incorporate tolerance and students` tolerance quotients, and then suggest a direction for tolerance education. According to the analysis of the textbooks of social studies and moral education currently used in middle and high schools, the educational perspective of tolerance was not reflected in the textbooks consistently and the textbooks of history education and moral education rather could encourage persecutive or discriminative attitude. In the description styles, the part of history in social studies took the approach of the survival of the fittest, the textbooks of moral education the idealistic or neo-republican approach, the part of geography in social studies the approach of the inquiry of social science, and the part of general social science in social studies the approach of the solution of controversial issues. In order to measure the tolerance quotient of Korean middle and high school students, 36 situations which are usually encountered in the area of politics, society, culture were presented to students. The students showed persecutive or discriminative and indifferent attitudes toward the majority of items. They were especially persecutive or discriminate and indifferent toward such items as unification, North Koreans, the nuclear missile development by North Korea, luxury of the wealthy class, abrogation of the death penalty, demonstrations causing inconvenience, discomfort arising from communal life, Korean classical music, building other religious facilities near one`s own house, etc. Based on the results above, this study suggests some specific contents for tolerance education as the followings. First, textbooks should be described based on the view of tolerance and recognition of others-basic virtues with which every member of civil society must equip. Second, those issues such as the consciousness of North Korea, unification, conflicts among races, conflicts among cultures, and conflicts among religions should be treated seriously in the textbooks.