고등학교 사회과 법교육의 문제점과 개선방안에 대한 연구

Abstract

Today's society is in pursuit of democracy, and constitutionalism is one of the fundamental principles of democracy. Individual people's every social life is associated with law directly or indirectly, no matter whether they want it or not. Law is the standard of human behavior, and doesn't exist for specific people only. Instead, that is a national device to protect all the people's right, and it's mandatory to know about law in modern life. Accordingly, law-related education gains in importance, and nobody can deny its oughtness as part of school education. The purpose of this study was to define the necessity and significance of law-related education and to delve into how law was instruction in high school. Especially, whether a new subject titled Law & Society was in line with the current 7th national curricula was examined and its textbook was analyzed in order to show some of the right directions for high school law-related education. The findings of this study were as follows: As for the quantitative weight of law-related education in each of the past and current national curricula, the 7th ones gave less weight to that, as just five pages were allocated to that, which accounted for 2 percent of the whole pages. Even though law starts to be educated as one of the independent subjects, it isn't a mandatory course, and lots of students who don't choose that have far less chance to learn about law. Given the fact every high school graduate must acquire fundamental legal knowledge, this phenomenon is extremely concerning. When the 'Law & Social' textbook was analyzed, it's found that the textbook included the definitions of the Constitution and general principles and gave an even introduction about every relevant area. In terms of content and repetitive learning, its sequence was good since there was a proper link between elementary school grade 6 and middle school grade 2, the 10th grade. In addition, the textbook offered appropriate law-related knowledge in consideration of learner develop-mental stage. Regarding its compliance with the current national curricula in view of textbook contained law theories in its main body to let learners acquire general knowledge. As for the function of law, its value and learner attitude, the textbook put great stress on inquiry activities to have them look into legal issues on their own and reach a rational decision so that they could have an appropriate attitude toward law. Compared to the former national curricula, the current ones took a significant step to offer law-related education as one of the separate classes. Furthermore, they made a deeper approach to legal issues, instead of enumerating difficult theories. Real cases and precedents were provided to enhance the relevant thinking faculty of learners, and the curricula tried to conduct education in due order in consideration of their cognitive and moral development. All the attempts could be said to make a big contribution to attaining the object of law-related education. However, there was something to be desired. Economic laws weren't handled in more detail. It should be mentioned that several types of laws, such as family registry system in family law, are likely to change over time. Although the present curricula presented much more precedents or cases than before, students should be allowed to gain access to more diverse cases or latest precedents. And the types of photo or illustrated materials that represent typical contemporary legal phenomena should be selected to provide stronger motivation to learners. As the importance of law is increasingly accentuated in modern society, high school should direct its energy into actualizing constitutionalism and teaching students to make a rational judgment of legal phenomena, have proper problem-solving skills, respect for basic human rights and be well cultured as eligible members of democratic society. And they should additionally be instructed to respond to increasing international disputes or problem situations in a appropriate and flexible manner, as it's now the globalization era. Besides, it's additionally required to come up with better teaching learning and evaluation methods and take other necessary actions in order to enhance the overall educational system.