The inheritance and improvement of "traditional ethics" in school education: An extended discussion centered on the "ethics education" in Korean Middle Schools in the 1970s

The 1970s is a significant period of constructing national ethics in Korea. At that time, the Park Chung-hee regime had been striving for raising collective consciousness and unifying its people to consider themselves as "Korean nationals" or "Korean nationality." The ethics education was therefore an important means to develop/create such ideology. Apart from taking advantage of the anti-communism and patriotism education, the Park Chung-hee regime also employed "traditional ethics" to construct such national identity and ideology. It is noteworthy that what the Park Chung-hee regime carried out in the "ethics education" was actually an inheritance and improvement of the "traditional ethics" from the period of the Syngman Rhee regime in the 1950s. The main cause resulting in the changes of the "traditional ethics" in the "ethics education" in the 1970s was due to the changes of the applying objectives. By discussing the applying objectives of the "ethics education" in the 1970s and analyzing the textbooks of Middle School Ethics used in junior high schools and High School National Ethics used in senior high schools, this essay aims to explore what the "ethics education" in the 1970s inherited from the "traditional ethics" of the Syngman Rhee regime and how it had been improved.