교과와 교사

The Subject and The Teacher

학생의 교과 공부는 심성을 함양하기 위한 것이며 학생이 함양해야 할 심성은 교과에 붙박혀 있다. 이런 의미의 교과 공부는 교사의 가르침 없이는 불가능한 것으로서, 그 가르침이 수행되는 방식은 이른바 단편적 지식이라 비판되는 그것을 통하는 것 이외의 다른 방법이 없다. 교사는 그 단편적 지식을 가지고 그 이면의 마음을 학생 앞에서 현시하는 사람이다. 한마디로 말하여, 교사는 심성함양을 자신의 업으로 삼아 후세대인 학생을 그 길로 이끄는 사람이라고 말할 수 있다. 이 일이 대단히 어렵고 때로 거의 실현불가능한 일로 지각되기도 하지만 교사가 교사인 것은 바로 이 어려운 일을 하기 때문이다. 이 점에 유의한다면 우리는 교육과정 개편(특히 7차 교육과정)을 통하여 교육을 개선하려고 할 때 가지는 조급한 마음을 조금은 누그러뜨릴 수도 있게 될 것이다. 교육이 조금이라도 개선될 수 있다면, 그것은 교육과정의 개편에 의해서가 아니라 오직 그 교육과정을 살아 움직이게 하는 교사에 의해서 가능하다.

The 7th Curriculum needs to be continuously reinterpreted, although the implementation of the Curriculum already has been gone. The 7th Curriculum is not much different from the former curricular, although the advocators of it say that it is much different. The national common basic subjects in the 7th Curriculum are in fact the same as the subjects in the traditional curricular. Therefore, the subjects in the 7th Curriculum should be taught in the intellectually honest form of subjects, as before. Considering this point, we can evaluate that the assertions of the advocacies of the 7th Curriculum—such as, the accommodations for students needs, the preparation for the globalization and informalization of the 21the century—regard the result of the subject learning as the aim of it. Therefore, the assertions are confusing the basics of education with the peripherals of it. This kind of confusion surely result in other various confusions in the educational theory and practices. The confusion regarding the teacher s roles is one of the confusions. The assertions that the main body of learning is the students themselves, and that the teacher should take the place of guiding/ accelerating students learning, are misrepresenting an invariable truth— student -centered education —in a distorted way. Those assertions cannot be raised unless the teacher is considered as a mean to fulfill students needs. The objective for the student to study the subject is to cultivate mind, and the mind to be cultivated is inherent in the subject itself. In this sense, the studying subjects are impossible without the teacher s teaching, and the only way for the teaching to be implemented is through the so-called fragmented knowledge . The teacher is the person who teaches of the fragmented knowledge in order to demonstrate students the mind on the other side of that knowledge. That is, the teacher is the one who look on the mind cultivation as his permanent profession in order to direct students to the way of cultivating minds. This job is very difficult and is considered to be almost impossible to be realized. However, we know a man for a teacher by the fact that he has been doing the very job. Keeping this point in mind, we need not to be teased in making the education better through redesigning another nationwide curriculum. If we can even expect the improvement of the education, it will be possible by the teacher who makes the curriculum vivid, not by the redesigning the curriculum itself.