복지국가와 평생학습권의 실현

Art. 31 of the Constitutional Law is understood as ‘the right of education’. This article was actually introduced in 1980. From that time on, the scholars of education created and developed the concept of lifelong education or lifelong learning, which currently stands dominant by replacing the old concept. Many education related laws were revised in 1997 trying to be in accordance with the updated theory of the pedagogy. And then we are facing with the question that when the inferior substituted laws are changed into the new one, what is the best way to interpret the superior constitutional law which remains unchained. In the meantime, academic legal scholars and the lawyers of the court stayed as same as before armed with ‘schooling paradigm’ and ‘instruction paradigm’ outlook. However, a new ‘learning paradigm’ came into their places. The passive right of school based pupils to be taught by the state-directed education is now substituted with the active right to learn of learning society based people by self-directed study. This means the substantial enlargement of national sovereignty. Lifelong education and lifelong learning stand in the background of welfare state. Right of lifelong learning for all, any time, any place is surely be accepted as democratic, educational welfare ideal because it will remove discrimination by guaranteeing people the equal opportunity according to their merits. It is hoped that our society will be changed into more prosperous one by adopting the viewpoint of lifelong learning. The substantial change of the concept of ‘education’ in Art. 31 Constitutional Law into ‘learning’ makes us sure that current school centered esp. elite educational policy is unconstitutional one, therefore from now onwards it is necessary that the governmental policy of education should be based on the principle ‘lifelong learning(that is popular education) first, school centered elite education next’ for the purpose of constitutionality.