We Will Inform You About The Importance Of Students

On Monday, the Ministry of Education announced that history textbooks for middle and high schoolers nationwide will be authored by the government starting in the 2017 school year.Rival political parties were locked in a bitter dispute Tuesday over the government's reintroduction of state history textbooks for secondary school students, with the main opposition party announcing an all-out war against the plan.The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) pledged not to cooperate with the ruling Saenuri Party on the budget and laws regarding state-authored history books.Later in the day, NPAD Chairman Moon Jae-in and other senior party members will participate in a rally in downtown Seoul against the state textbooks."The party will not cooperate in setting a budget for the state-published textbooks," said Rep. Choi Jae-cheon of the NPAD during a party meeting.The Saenuri Party, meanwhile, said it will push ahead with the state textbooks, vowing to hold several seminars and public hearings to promote the issue.The ruling party said it will focus on informing people about the importance of ensuring students have a balanced view of history and that they are educated based on facts."The NPAD leadership will face strong backlash from the public if it continues to turn away from important issues," Won Yoo-chul, floor leader of the Saenuri Party, said during a party meeting, urging the opposition party to focus on improving people's lives.
The government started publishing school history textbooks under the authoritarian Park Chung-hee government in 1974. It relinquished the power to private publishers in 2011 under a government monitoring system.Currently, history textbooks are published by eight private publishing companies after being approved by an independent textbook review committee of experts. Schools choose from any of the eight textbooks, while primary schools have a single set of state-authored history textbooks.
CREDIT