한국 다문화교육 내용선정의 쟁점과 과제 = Issues of Multicultural Education Contents in Korean Society

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study is to review or preview the issues in decision making on the contents of multicultural education in Korean society. Although the curriculum decision making process, and particularly in the case of multicultural education, is always a political process where diverse interest groups or ``cultural`` groups often conflict and struggle to be recognised and appreciated of their interests or cultural identities, in Korea, such conflicts among diverse cultural groups are not yet clearly articulated. This may be partly due to the fact that many minority groups in Korea have not yet collectively organized themselves to make their voices heard to the public. We first review some general issues of the multicultural education contents: issues on how to accommodate cultural identities of minority groups while providing common education for the unity of a society; issues arising from how to define the roles and scopes of ``multicultural education`` in relation to the ``general education`` or ``education for international understanding``; and issues raised from various types of multicultural education, such as ``education for adaptation of minorities``, ``education for identities of minorities``, and ``education for mutual understanding and anti-prejudice``. On the basis of this review on general issues, we suggest a framework for classifying issues of multicultural education contents, i.e. cases of voluntary inclusion, voluntary exclusion, non-voluntary inclusion, and non-voluntary exclusion. For each case, the nature of controversy differs according to whether the contents are related to ``common culture`` or ``minorities``, ``unique culture``. Thus, for example, voluntary exclusion (i.e. rejection) of common culture by a minority group raises different issues from the case of voluntary rejection of their own unique culture education program. Although the issues in the same category in this framework may be approached in different ways according to the nature of issue and according to the situations of each society, this framework provides us helpful devices to anticipate and prepare for the possible issues in curriculum decision making in the future in Korean society We also review some practical issues raised from various types of multicultural education currently conducted in Korea. Some of these issues, eg. the identity formation of the North Korean defectors, provoke a big challenge for Korean multicultural education development, but they also provide a chance for enhancing our theoretical understanding of the tasks of multicultural education. We conclude that multicultural education for the majority should go beyond mere ``understanding`` of minority cultures. It must include practical efforts to enable them to understand and confront the equity problems among diverse cultural groups within a society more actively, and to reflect on the fairness of their privileges and even to willingly give up them if necessary.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Todd,R, "Education in a multicultural society" Cassell 1991