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2017 Fellowship for Textbook Specialists of Colombia

Korean culture that fills the senses

Photo - Luz Dary Hemelberg Rojas)
Luz Dary Hemelberg Rojas
Director of Educar Publishing

From an editorial desk in Colombia

In the hectic publishing world where time consumes life and hours and where the academic world is built and de-built every second between the debates and confrontations required by thinking up and making educational materials to guarantee the quality of education equally (this being understood as leaving the doors open to all students in the country who wish to mobilize their learning), I would imagine a Guajiro child sharing a classroom with a child of the same grade from the capital. I would think about the learning definitions of their study programs and wonder, “What would be the common thing they could talk about from their learning experiences? What would be the needs of their teachers? Why are the smaller needs of teachers established as the greatest local and national needs, messing up the debate on the fundamentals? Why should we teach what we teach? Is what we teach important for students? Is it important for the country? Is it enough to articulate the learning standards with the Basic Learning Rights to guarantee the level of equality that inspired these guidelines? Should learning definitions be left to the local? Or is it necessary to build a national base?”

I would ask these questions from that place where the editorial products are born between some painful premature births, others that are deadly from time past (I do not only mean that they should be ready to be promoted within a deadline marked by a chronogram that argues between supply and demand). Likewise, I would reflect on the difficulties with which the 21st century began to see publishers that were always -- especially in Colombia -- the great bridge of communication and understanding between the Ministry of National Education, the guidelines thereof, and the standards of education with the teachers and the educational community. Editorial products were seen as significant material that allowed the realization of those very abstract guidelines. Today, textbooks are understood as editorial products that should be consumed on an annual basis without highlighting the importance of the timelessness thereof as pedagogical and didactic material that implicitly involves a proposal to understand and put into practice the provisions to formalize an official study program by the Ministry of National Education. This characteristic of remaining throughout time, because the quality of contents and didactics and methodologies with which they were made allowed such transcendence and longevity, is now overshadowed by the behaviour of the market inspired and taught by the great publishing houses, including foreign multinationals that turned the publishing world into a market of books framing a grotesque submission of national consumers to the interests of the world market without trying to save any originality, any territory specificity.

The call in the middle of the editorial season passed in time

And so, among the disorder of ideas and questions that are thought of in fractions of seconds - because thought is faster than words - my reflections were interrupted one afternoon on June 16th, 2017, when the editorial season was in full bloom, by a call that came in an impeccable invitation written on a letterhead with the seal of the Korean Embassy. The solemnity of the writing caught my attention because, in the digital world, everything is synthesized with a corporate mail. The embassy was inviting publishers to participate in an experience dubbed Meeting on Korean culture addressed to specialists in School texts in Colombia.

The first thing that came to mind, at that moment, was, “How many Colombian publishers would go to this meeting?” The only name I managed to write in my short list was Grupo Editorial EDUCAR. With great pride, I understood that I was the director of the only publisher that has survived the economic opening that gave access to the great European multinationals that have subsumed, until they were taken out of the market, Colombian publishers with more than 40 years’ recognized career. I signed up with great joy -- since it was a great learning opportunity – and with great hope and with the certainty that comes from knowing that we were doing our editorial work with a sense of national consciousness. Registration requested our resumes. Then, I knew the importance of having been a teacher, researcher, and author of textbooks and of having been studious of the study program, because in South Korea teachers are the most appreciated and valued professionals. We would comply with the requirements that the embassy told us about winning one of the three places offered by the call -- not because we were the only Colombian publisher, but because at Educar we carry out pedagogical debates and judicious studies regarding the real needs of our education every year. Furthermore, the business owners were present, having worked for Colombian education for more than 39 years. We had a lot to tell and share about our study programs and about the way in which we made our educational materials.

Korea from the academy

On August 6t, Hyejung, Park, an ASK researcher, wrote to us; for our convenience, she told us that her name in Spanish was Diana. From that moment, we communicated with the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS, for its acronym in English). I sent my presentation on Colombian study programs and experienced the culture I barely knew through history books.

We arrived in Korea on October 29th,2017a nd from that day on unti November 4 th we learned a lot about a culture we knew nothing about, only what the media distort regarding the conflict between North Korea and South Korea. We were met by a group of investigators of absolute rigor in discipline led by head teacher So-young, Park, who is also the head of the division of the project to disseminate correct information about Korea and who stood out with her excellent management and leadership.

As an entity under the Ministry of Education, the Academy of Korean Studies (ASK) was founded to promote Korean studies through research, education of Korean culture, exchanges, and expansion of Korean studies. In short, its main objective is to raise knowledge about Korea and to improve the image of the country. There, we learned that, for Korea, the fundamental thing is to invest in education and its economy. This program, which has several focuses of development, seminar on the world's textbooks to include correct information about Korea, analysis of foreign school textbooks, training in Korea for foreign experts in textbooks, seminar on school textbooks, visit to other countries to improve contents about Korea, development of materials that help improve the knowledge about Korea, assistance for private organizations of other countries, library of international texts and web page, and proposals on ways of cooperation to develop textbooks and supplementary social sciences materials, allows the spread of their culture and makes themselves known by countries in all the continents.

The Project division for disseminating correct information about Korea, the Centre for International Studies, and the Academy of Korean Studies welcomed us and introduced us to a program with strong academic and cultural component. In the first one, we studied topics such as the Korean Educational System by Sa-Hun, Kim, a very young researcher who surprised us with his disciplinary command of the Korean study program. I cannot forget the words he used to recognize the exhibition of Colombia by Educar: "impressive presentation." Our topic, Study program: Colombia vs. Korea, opened the seminar. The presentation of Sa-Hun, Kim then followed. I was impressed by his entrepreneurial spirit and his love for education; no wonder he mastered his subject so well -- apart from his Doctor in study program and pedagogical methodology, he was the Director of the Korean study program society, president, and member of the National Study Program amendment of 2015. Still, the highlight of our presentations was not the disciplinary mastery demonstrated by the two countries; it was the coincidence between the Colombian study program and the Korean study program.

During the seminar and lectures on the development of the Korean economy and Inter-Korean relationships of confrontation and reconciliation by researchers Young-Jun, Cho and Wan-Bom, Lee, respectively, I understood that, although we had significant similarities regarding the study program guidelines, what makes Korea a first-world country is that they are clear about their country project; as far as education is concerned, they know what to teach, what their teaching is for, and if what they teach is good for the country. They are certain that everything they teach is learned by their students, and that is extremely useful for the country because they work to maintain a sense of national consciousness and solidarity among all Korean citizens; they work to transmit values and family tradition from the example of the elderly and practices of relationships, not from the verbalization of values. They are capable of recognizing themselves as Koreans regardless of their cities of origin and their social classes; they are not divided by ethnic groups or regional differences because they do not have them, they speak the same language, and they know their history, their mistakes, and their national objectives. They work to improve their historical errors and stimulate creativity; they are educated to be good citizens, aware of their national project. Education is a major part of its country project and is coherent with the main pillars of its economy; they chose an open market economy aiming at the potential of growth, institutions are conceived as necessary, not optional conditions, and they work for industrialization and import substitution. They went from the so-called "three white industries" present in the 50s -- flour, sugar, and cotton – as a typical model of developing countries to the strategy of export-oriented industrialization, with the development of heavy and chemical industries framing the growth factors from the active opening, wide investment, government leadership, and demographic evolution. In addition, its investment in economic growth factors should be highlighted, such as changes in demographic structure, increase in the active population, mechanization of agriculture, and investment in human capital.

This last factor of development is addressed in the following paragraph: investment in human capital since the educational revolution that made its way with the government of Lee Seungman, who achieved the consolidation of the State through education, reduces the level of illiteracy to zero percent and stimulates the fervour for education from the increase in the university admission rate and contempt for vocational education -- because it ponders the investigation from the interests of its economy -- and from the continuity in political projects, no matter which ruling party starts his term and which one ends his term. The proposal on Korean content included in the books of Colombia presented by researcher Hye-jun, Park demonstrated the great interest and organization of Korea with regard to its education and the objective focused on its history being well known and known in all countries of the world where there are curricular meshes mentioning the oriental culture.

Korean culture that fills the senses

The visit to places as unique as the Jangseogak archive was decisive in this experience; these beautiful cultural and historical places were therapeutic for the senses, soul, skin, and thought, which were assaulted by the majesty of places like the Gwangmyeong Cave, the transfer on fast trains from cities such as Gwangmyeong to Gyeongju, the view of Yangdong Village and historical areas of Gyeongju as well as the New Gyeongju station to Seoul, where we finished the night with the presentation of the Festival of Seoul Lights and Seoul Theatre. These places with an inner voice made us see beyond the academe -- thanks to the living experience offered by this program -- that Korea is a country that cares about the reconstruction of its history, appropriation of its culture, investment in education, and historical memory; they are literally rebuilding the ancestral temples and cities destroyed by Japan during the invasion period. Walking through these places inspires a moment of silence for reflection and out of respect for this culture; these places show from the visibility of experience that Koreans mark economic growth, social justice, and education from a policy of cultural and economic expansion and work for the recognition of their culture in projects that exist only in Korea based on the vision of expansion and cultural recognition. Considering all this, I take my hat off to the Project Division for disseminating correct information about Korea, to the Centre for International Studies and the Academy of Korean Studies for their concern about the fundamentals to expand its culture and education, and to Korea for managing to gather its history and overcoming its wars and invasions in less than 50 years. The ability of Koreans to transcend themselves is truly amazing.
Photo - 2017 Fellowship for Textbook Specialists of Colombia


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