한국에서의 실존주의 교육철학의 수용과 전개 (해방후∼ 1960년대)

The purpose of this study is to examine the acceptance, development, and influences of existential philosophy of education in Korea.

The development of science and technology in modern society caused the dehumanizing phenomenon. Therefore, man tends to be as a being of means or a mechanical being. The Existentialism, which appeared in the early 20th century, contrived the recovering of the humanity while emphasizing on the quest for the human being.

The existentialism was introduced to the field of philosophy in Korea during the 1920s. However, its acceptance and development as an educational philosophy was during the 1960s.

Despite this slow acceptance of existentialism in education, Sasanggye, one of the leading monthly academic journals of the early 20th century intellectual class in Korea, played a very important role in the introduction of the existentialism to the general public. During the 1950s- 1960s process of the existentialism's formal acceptance to the filed of education in Korea, Enwoo Kim, Shinwong Kang, and Kyuho Lee, three of the leading scholars in the educational philosophy, sought for the possible future of Koreas education in the existentialism, therefore their prudent academic effort should take a significant place in the process of the existentialism's reception to educational philosophy in Korea.

Due to the fact that the most part of the modern Korean educational system was established under heavy influence of the American pragmatism of John Dewey during the two decades after the 1945 Liberation, the influence of the existentialism in education was very insignificant. This insignificant contribution of the existentialism was also caused by the characteristic methodological limitation. Undoubtedly the inferior surroundings in the educational practice in Korea during that period also played an important role in this insignificant contribution of the existentialism in the field of education and, the existentialism had been a mere theory without practice among many other minor ideas in education. However, it seems that the historical importance of the existentialism was quite significant as its role of providing a broader understanding of education and students to the educators in the field through its unique idea of the uncontinual formulative possibility in education(die M glichkeit der unstetigen Formen in der Erziehung).