Back in September, Mckaylee touched on what she believes the ultimate goal for global citizens is: turning “History” – a perspective coming from a dominant voice, into “Histories” – a plural and all-inclusive memory of many individual testimonies. In the past few weeks of writing my focused papers and presentation on “national memory” I have made a similar argument against having an all-encompassing remembrance of history, one that poorly reflects the views of all for the benefit of the few.

Although having a broad perspective on history may seem like a pretty unanimous desire in a classroom of “global citizens,” it is evident that this sentiment is not felt in all parts of the world. Just this month, there have been protests ongoing in South Korea because the Korean government has announced its planned replacement of the current varieties of history books available, into one universal text for the entire nation to follow. I can’t even begin to express my frustration with this blatant attempt to manipulate history. The good news, however, is that the public is responding critically to this decision. To quote professor Chung-in Moon from Seoul:

“Why should we have one version of a text-book? We need multiple views so students can choose. History can be subject to multiple interpretations.”

I think he sums up my stance perfectly in these few, brief sentences.

Please take a moment to hear the details of this story from the original BBC report.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for the original post, Mckaylee.

-Lauren Shykora

BBC article: “Why South Korea is rewriting its history books.” Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34960878