Recent literature education has made efforts to break away from the view of elitism by setting the comprehensive goals of enhancing learners' literary abilities and promoting the culture of literature in the community dimension. It is also a product o...
Recent literature education has made efforts to break away from the view of elitism by setting the comprehensive goals of enhancing learners' literary abilities and promoting the culture of literature in the community dimension. It is also a product of recognizing this problem that, together with the term 'culture of literature,' the view of culturology has come to the fore of literature education since the 7th National Curriculum. This paper examined whether the view of culturology is necessary in literature education and whether the current curriculum and textbooks reflect the view of culturology adequately and discussed the future direction of literature education in the topography of contemporary culture.
It may be right to see the relation between literature and popular culture more as expansion than as crisis in that all literary works are the outcomes of writers' expression activities and, at the same time, of interactions with readers. In the 7th National Curriculum, a room was prepared for accommodating popular literature or media texts comprehensively from a culturological view by introducing the term 'culture of literature.' As literature is viewed from the viewpoint of culturology, literary works to be included in Korean language and literature textbooks under the 7th National Curriculum could be expanded not only to popular literature but also to popular culture texts such as TV dramas and musical scripts. However, the view of culturology has limitations. For it is more natural to use literary works, which provide learners with more valuable literary experiences, as the media of educational communication in the field of education.
In conclusion, considering the current state of literature culture and the peculiarity of literature education, it will be reasonable for literature education: (1) to expand the view of culturology; (2) to switch its focus from literary works to critical activities; and (3) to provide learners with various experiences in creation using digital media and, by doing so, to maximize the effect of transfer and retention of literary experiences in classroom.