With the accelerated process of globalization, informationization and regionization, the exchanges between South Korea and China become more and more frequent. Especially bilateral trade has developed rapidly since 1992 when South Korea and China esta...
With the accelerated process of globalization, informationization and regionization, the exchanges between South Korea and China become more and more frequent. Especially bilateral trade has developed rapidly since 1992 when South Korea and China established diplomatic relations. By 2010, China has become the largest exporter, the largest trade surplus and the largest investor of South Korea. Therefore, this study compares the differences and similarities of the Korean and Chinese economic education. These two countries can learn from each other on the aspect of economic education.
For this purpose, this study analyzes the content
of current economic education curriculum and textbooks used in South Korea and China. From the perspective of education curriculum, this paper analyzes the background, characteristics and constitutes of Social studies Curriculum Revised in 2009 used in Korean high schools and New Curriculum Standards of Politics Education used in Chinese high schools. The number of hours in class and the number of hours in economic class of these two countries are compared as well. Lastly the differences and similarities of the objectives and content of economic education are compared. From the perspective of economic education textbooks, this paper compares the types and systems of economic education textbooks of these two countries. And then this paper compares content of economic education textbooks of these two countries based on three criteria: “the same theme, the same explanation”,“the same them, different explanation”and“different themes”.
The results of this study are shown in the following perspectives. From the perspective of educational curriculum, Korean economic education cultivates democratic citizens through microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts such as concepts of market economy, operating principles and phenomena. Chinese economic education also simply teaches elements about market economy. However the focus of Chinese economic education is to cultivate students’ ideals and beliefs, patriotism, civic virtues through socialist economic system, distribution system and the importance of government regulation. From the perspective of textbooks, Korean and Chinese textbooks have the same description about twelve topics such as foreign exchange, consumption, enterprises and so on, while they have different explanations about thirteen topics such as currency, credit cards, price changes and so forth. This thesis also illustrates some economic content appeared in Korean textbooks such as scarcity, diverse economic system, market demand and supply etc. and some economic content appeared in Chinese textbooks such as socialist market economy, scientific outlook on development, well-off society and so on.