중학생의 민주 시민 의식 조사 연구

Abstract

For the development of democracy in a society, democratic living attitude and active social participation of citizens who are members of the society are very important. The democratic civil qualities are not attained naturally but they can be developed through education. Among school education courses, the middle school is the time for internalizing and developing basic citizenship. This study aims to propose the direction of education for cultivating good democratic citizens required by the future by surveying the level of democratic citizenship of middle school students. For this survey, I selected the virtues of good democratic citizens based on various literature and the results of previous researches. In addition, I investigated the level of democratic citizenship of middle school students in Yangsan-si, Gyeongsangnam-do. As a research method, I used a questionnaire survey. For measurement of the level of democratic citizenship, I classified the virtues of democratic citizens into the categories of human dignity, law-abiding spirit, rational decision-making and social participation, and I made a 28-item questionnaire. I then analyzed the differences in the answers to the questionnaires according to their gender, grade, home environment and Internet use time. To sum up the results, the democratic citizenship of middle school students was generally high. Among the categories of virtues of democratic citizenship, human dignity showed the highest score and social participation showed the lowest score. When examining the democratic citizenship according to the characteristics of each variable, among home environment factors, the longer students talked with their parents, the higher their levels of democratic citizenship were. And when students thought positively about their parents’ lives, their levels of democratic citizenship were high, too. However, the factors such as gender, grade, the number of siblings and Internet use time did not show significant differences in the general level of democratic citizenship. Consequently, other variables except for the amount of time to talk with parents and the view on parents’ lives among home environment factors did not have a great influence on the level of democratic citizenship. This study provides several implications as follows: First, in order to enhance the social participation which shows the lowest level among virtues of democratic citizenship, we should run more realistically and systematically the volunteer activities, experience activities, student government activities and club activities which are now in operation. Second, the school should strengthen the education that builds students' character as our society becomes more selfish and concerned only with the result. Third, a democratic school environment should be formed in that general school structure and school life have an influence on democratic civic education as much as formal curriculum and learning contents do. Finally, the school should expand the opportunities for students to have diverse experience by connecting with local communities as a way to cultivate their democratic civil qualities. Students need to pay attention to the problems and events of their communities in order to cultivate good citizenship. Therefore, local governments should give full administrative and financial support to students’ participation in the community affairs by arranging various programs including lectures for youth, social volunteer activities, various festivals and helping neglected senior citizens.