The Marmot’s Hole

“Textbook revision?  Oh no, not again!”

Fear not: this is not what it seems.  Nothing to do with nationalistic reinterpretations of history, or pitched battles between countries, but rather updating South Korean social-curriculum (my term) textbooks to reflect changing realities.  (Or perhaps, in a prescriptive, normative society such as Korea’s, to try to help change such realities.)

Confronting the realities of the lowest birth rate in the world and changing social dynamics, the Ministry of Education (and Human Resources Development, but really, that’s a mouthful) has announced that as of next year, “textbooks on social affairs, practical courses, and citizenship will be revised to reflect societal changes on issues involving population, family values, and roles of men and women” (to quote the Hankyoreh—yeah, yeah, I know, it’s the Hani, but searching through Google News, it was the first English-language article from a Korean source that I could find on the subject).

Gone are traditional gender roles (Dad works while Mom stays at home), implicit endorsement of single-child families, and an unhealthy focus on the myth of a homogeneous Korean “race”; in are independent seniors, working moms, housekeeping dads, and multiple siblings.

Reuters has also picked up the story (see below).

To quote the Reuters article, which provides a good summary:

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is set to cleanse gender stereotypes from its school textbooks, where women have long been depicted as housekeepers and men as the breadwinners.

The government said on Monday that it would also encourage bigger families to boost the country’s sagging birth rate.

“I personally don’t believe there’s anything wrong with a mother cooking a meal,” said Education Ministry official Kim Soon-ju. “But there’s imbalance about gender roles still in our textbooks that should look undesirable to anybody.”

The ministry said it wanted to promote the idea of a flexible family life and reverse a trend where women marry and bear children later in life or choose not to have them at all.

South Korea has struggled to erase deeply entrenched stereotypes about gender roles and to boost its birth rate, which — at an average of 1.08 children per woman — is the lowest in the developed world.

(At first glance, I wasn’t quite sure how encouraging women to get out and work squared with essentially encouraging them to have more children…but I guess the idea is that families should have more children, and in the process, husbands should share more in the responsibilities of parenting, etc.: see the next two paragraphs.)

Gone from primary and high school textbooks from next year will be suggestions that it is a woman’s job to iron and cook. The new books will promote working mothers and fathers who help at home, and will show families that have more than one child.

The ministry plans to cut items from textbooks such as: “It’s important not only for family happiness but also for national stability that fathers work hard and lead the family while mothers make sure that everyone in the family can freely focus on their jobs”.

The ministry also plans to delete suggestions that the elderly are passive, inactive and waiting to be supported. And, to cut discrimination, it will place less emphasis on extolling the single-race make-up of the Korean people.

The Hankyoreh fills in some details:

Elementary school textbooks will focus on multiple-child families, in some cases adding additional siblings to existing storylines. The ministry’s hope is that the changes will encourage a culture that embraces larger families in order to combat South Korea’s declining birth rate, currently the lowest in the developed world.

In addition, lines expressing stereotypical gender roles will be changed. New terms to be introduced include “working mother” and “father who takes care of household chores.” Also subject to change are lines from sixth-grade social affairs textbooks, which say, “Father’s hard work as a breadwinner and mother’s supportive role to other family members, which enables them to concentrate on their work, are not only important for the well-being of the family but also that of the country.”

To raise students’ awareness about the elderly as active participants in an increasingly aging society, negative images about the elderly - such as storylines or images depicting them lying around the house or sitting in senior centers - will be removed. Students will instead be instructed to consider the elderly as contributing members of society, rather than as dependent family members.

In addition, the shift in the nation’s family policy from “limiting childbirth” to “encouraging childbirth” will be covered. The current social affairs and citizenship textbooks used in middle and high schools include such lines as, “An enormous population increase has caused a number of problems like the destruction of the natural environment” or, “In an aging society, the only population that increases is the old and sick, and they become a social burden” or “a working mother doesn’t take care of house chores, so the house is a mess.” The ministry plans to change those lines and to add content about the causes of and problems with a decreasing population as well as efforts to encourage women to pursue careers.

Additionally, expressions that reinforce discrimination against those of mixed-race backgrounds and immigrants, as well as excessive emphasis on Korea as a nation of “one blood,” will disappear from textbooks.

Given how rampant and systemic many problems seem to be in Korean society (corruption, sexual hypocricy, nationalistic chauvinism, turning a blind eye to the Norks, etc.—and yes, Bluejives and Pawikirogi, of course every society has its faults; on the other hand, I don’t doubt there are Koreans who are well aware of and vexed by these problems—and the first two problems in particular directly affect those near and dear to me who were born and live there), maybe to some of the more jaded readers here, these changes or the issues they’re dealing with seem like a drop in the bucket.  In the end, all these changes might boil down to just encouraging a higher birth rate, and therefore more economic growth…but there do seem to be a number of changes here aimed at broadening the outlook of Korea’s next generation.  The reevaluation of traditional gender roles and deemphasis of racialism, in particular, would seem to be positive developments.