Examining the Concept of “Education” in the Constitutional Court’s Case Law on Comprehensive Restrictions on Teachers’ Political Fundamental Rights

The debate about the political fundamental rights of teachers shows no sign of abating. This paper examines whether the premise of the issue itself is flawed. It uses Jang Sang-ho’s ‘the wrong view of education’, which criticises the first period of education studies, as a framework for analysis, and constitutional court cases that are considered important by both proponents and opponents of guaranteeing teachers’ political fundamental rights. The wrong view of education includes “conventional approach to education”, “heterogeneous disciplinary approach to education” and “result-oriented approach to education”, which confuse the extraneous and internal of education and not only hide education but also cause problems such as nationalism. Specifically, in both traditional and outcome-oriented approaches to education, even the extraneous of education within the school system was labeled as ‘education,’ with its rules and values applied to the educative process. However, in ‘2018heonma551’(2018헌마551), the Constitutional Court partially shows that the guarantee of teachers’ political fundamental rights based on the reconceptualisation of “education” may be favourable to the consolidation of the core of school∩education.