역사교육과 인권: 아메리카혁명에서의 인권

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the human rights, universal rights of men, in the history education. In the history education of South Korea, it seems that human rights issues are little considered, and therefore it should be improved. To help teachers and students learning history, this paper introduces how human rights issues are considered in textbooks and teaching materials of history in the United States and Germany. The Virginia Bill of Rights and the United States Declaration of Independence which were declared during the American Revolution enlightened the beginning of a new era in the world history. Its unique characteristic was that the origin and validity of Human Rights are not deduced from the government, but from natural rights, the inherent and unalienable rights of men. At the same time, it became the basis of government and public order. Americans, however, did not pursued the final goal of essential ideas of these declarations. Few people desired to expand the principle of human rights to women, black slaves, and Native Americans. This denial of women as political subject, thereby refusing the possibility that women can benefit from the Declaration of Human Rights, was argued in various discussions. Especially, in the Southern colonies which was based on the slavery-based plantation economy, the revolution and declarations did not bring freedom to slaves but the heyday of slavery after the revolution. The history of expansion to the West of North America coincides with the deprivation of rights, deportation, and extermination of Native Americans. And the racial prejudice that Native Americans are primitive men, barbarians is still remains in the American history textbooks.