[Seoul YWCA Forum] Multiculture Education. What can we do for it?

On April 5, Seoul YWCA held the first forum on Multiculture Education to look into the current realities and seek alternative teaching methods to make children as global citizens. Here is the abstract of the paper presented at the forum.


The Current Realities in Multicultural Education in Schools
Yoonkyung Park, Professor, Cheongju National University of Education

Despite of fast spreading of multicultural education, it is not yet provided with good-quality and at a meaningful level. According to analysis, the schools give priority to culture education and language education among 6 components of multicultural education; multicultural understanding, culture education, language education, community sense, self-identity, and adoptability. Generally, it is organized as a part of the irregular curriculum so that only 8.9% of multicultural curriculum could be continued. In other words, multicultural education is provided restrictively and partially.

As a result of interview with teachers about how they understand multicultural education, most of them think students from multicultural families should basically learn Korean culture and language. This means students' assimilation into Korean society. The teachers' main problems are lack of overall understanding on multicultural education and educational materials.

In fact, however, the real problems of multicultural education in Korea are reverse discrimination against Korean students and drawing the line between students from multicultural families and Korean students. Nevertheless the school doesn't really support Korean students in need of help, it is supportive for students from multicultural families just because of their different faces. This is the reason why multiciultural education is criticized as a reverse discrimination. Besides, students from multicultural families are forced to participate in after-school program, even though they already adopted their school life.

For better multicultural education, the schools should set right directions and goals for meaningful multicultural education. Guideline can let the schools implement coherent multicutural education policy. The supporting system and evaluation process should be made for systematic and stable multicultural education. For example, Index of Multicultural Education Environment in School should be developed to check problems on multicultural education. This index should not be used for criticizing the schools but consulting educational policy and system.