Abstract
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Many social problems that happen at a multicultural society are no longer the problems of foreign countries only. It is already happening in the Korean society. The problems related to adaptation of immigrants, and their human rights, difficulties of educating their children, and the social conflicts between inhabitants and immigrants are becoming more and more severe. To prevent these problems and with an aim of developing a good multicultural society, government has been pouring various policies and funds for educating immigrants and their children. However, there exist various critics on such government policies and also on the process of multicultural education. We need to review the current situation and problems of multicultural education to cope with such problems in a better and more efficient way.
For this study purpose, I reviewed the papers that have been published to discuss multicultural education of Korea and surveyed 60 institutions that are providing multicultural education programs, including, for example, after school programs, the center for multicultural education and the lifelong learning centers, in several districts. With the help of researchers at the KNOU adult educator association, I also interviewed the learners, educators and other participants related to multicultural education and asked what are the difficulties and the needs for them in their participation in multicultural education. Based on such data and interview, I suggest in this paper new strategies for multicultural education.
The main points of this paper are as follows: we need develop programs and contents that (i) reflect different cultures of immigrants, rather than forcing them to learn Korean traditional culture, (ii) are offered and provided by the immigrants for the immigrants from their perspectives of living in the Korean society, (iii) should be provided in the form of a lifelong education in which both inhabitants and immigrants can participate and learn together, (iv) reflect gender equality perspectives so that the spouses, and in-law mothers of male immigrants may change their sex stereotype schema, and (v) would be taught to the adult educators in the multicultural citizenship education so that the ability and sensibility for multicultural education can be developed and enhanced.