In this article I attempt to analyze how Korean 5th, 6th 7th 8th 9th and 10th graders read personal writings including diary and letters written by several Yang-ban( upper class people) in the 16 and 17th centuries, which had never been revealed to st...
In this article I attempt to analyze how Korean 5th, 6th 7th 8th 9th and 10th graders read personal writings including diary and letters written by several Yang-ban( upper class people) in the 16 and 17th centuries, which had never been revealed to students. Main research questions are as follows: Which texts do they pay attention to or disregard when they construct historical knowledge inferring from personal writings written in the past? What directs students’ signification of texts and construction of historical knowledge? What implications does their interpreting historical texts give us about their historical consciousness? For this study, I asked primary, middle, and high school students to read selected articles from two male Yang-ban’s diaries and one femaleYang-ban’s diary about how they had their servants worked in the rice puddy, one male Yang-ban’s diary writing about his wife’s money making works, and one male Yang-ban’s letter to his son instructing kind attitude toward their servants, and ask the subjects of this study to think and talk about what they could infer from those writings. Asa result, I have come to the conclusion that Korean students select and interpret historical texts criticizing inequal social structure of cast system and patriarchy in the past and take perspectives of people who were suppressed by the social structure. This type of students’ selective reading of historical text implicates their historical consciousness pursuing equality and human rights.