Political Neutralism and Civic Education: Focusing on Freire’s Criticism of Social Welfare

Abstract

This study is a critical study of political neutralism with a focus on social welfare in Korea. Korean social welfare, like civil servants and teachers, takes a political neutralist stance. Political neutralism actually means uncritical acceptance of the regime's position and has a tendency to depoliticize it. In this context, Korean social welfare follows the position of residualism, and social welfare is practiced by providing services based on sympathy and charity. The purpose of this paper is to criticize Korea's social welfare from a political neutralist standpoint and seek alternatives to overcome it. To this end, this paper focuses on Freire's theory and seeks to develop discussions based on it. Freire criticized political neutralism as the logic of the oppressor, perpetuating an unjust order of inequality and class conflict, and subjecting citizens to a culture of silence and horizontal violence. In particular, social welfare was seen as a fictional tolerance and a strategy of the oppressor. This paper analyzed Freire's criticism by applying it to Korea's social welfare stance, that is, political neutralism and residualism. This paper proposed transforming social welfare into class politics toward institutionalism based on social rights and presented the content and direction of civic education.