Recently our country is entering the society of multi-culture rapidly because of the increase of international marriage and foreign immigrant workers. This is also proved by the objective number of staying foreigners reaching 1 million and 254 more th...
Recently our country is entering the society of multi-culture rapidly because of the increase of international marriage and foreign immigrant workers. This is also proved by the objective number of staying foreigners reaching 1 million and 254 more than 1 million first in history. The demand for other cultures due to the entrance to the society of multi-culture is influencing various fields of our society and education field is not exceptional and the role of education field is becoming very important. Especially with the increase of multi-cultured family due to international marriage and foreign immigrant workers who can be called as minority culture and group, the school education needs to do complete its role to make youths who live and study with them understand and accept other cultures more positively.
Self-esteem is sub-concept of self-concept and can be defined as evaluative and emotional attitude toward various qualities recognized by individual. And this becomes an important factor to desirable adjustment to environment and sound development of character for individual. Especially, positive self-esteem allowed people to accept other people better so the relationship with classmates and teachers were shown to be better and the adaptation to school life was shown to be easier. Thus to figure out whether self-esteem which was shown to have a positive influence on the acceptance of other people and the adjustment to school life influences the acceptance of other races and cultures or not can help youths to understand and accept the rapidly increasing multi-cultured family and foreign immigrant workers.
Therefore this research is focused on exploring the influence of self-esteem of youths on the understanding and acceptance of other races and cultures required to live in multi-cultured society centered on Southeast asians like Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines, and foreign immigrant workers who comprise 56% of long-term staying workers. The specific research questions set according to the goal of this research are as follows.
1. How great is the difference according to the difference of each field of self-esteem according to the difference of sex, grade, family type and monthly income?
2. How great is the difference of the demand level for international exchange between the group of high ranked 25% youths and the low ranked 255 youths in self-esteem?
3. Does each field of self-esteem of youths influence the understanding and acceptance of other races and cultures? 3-1. Does each field of self-esteem of youths influence the recognition and attitude toward Southeast asians?
3-2. Does each field of self-esteem of youths influence the acceptance of Southeast asians?
3-3. Does each field of self-esteem of youths influence the acceptance of foreign immigrant workers?
4. Are the understanding and acceptance of other races and cultures different according to the sex, grade and monthly income related to youths?
The population for data collection was 474 students of first and second grade of high schools located in Seoul, Incheon and Kyunggi provinces. To measure self-esteem, the scale modified and complemented for Korean youths by Hee-Hwa, Kim(1998) was used and to measure the acceptance level of foreign immigrant workers and Southeast asians, some of the questions developed by Sung-Tael, Lim(2002) was chosen and used. The analysis of data was carried out using SPSS WIN 12.00 program and technical statistical value was calculated according to research questions. t-test was carried out to find the difference of the demand level for international exchange according to self-esteem and the difference according to background variables of each field of self-esteem of youths and χ² test was carried to verify significance level. Also ANOVA was carried out to figure out whether there is difference in the recognition and attitude toward Southeast asians, the acceptance of Southeast asians and the acceptance of foreign immigrant workers according to each field of self-esteem.
The reached conclusions based on the analyzed result from data of this research are as follows.
First, girl students were shown to be higher than boy students in academic ability, general self-esteem, self-esteem of physical appearance, self-esteem of physical ability but boy students were shown to be higher in the rest 4 fields, namely, teacher-related delf-esteem, friend-related self-esteem, family-related self-esteem and character-related self-esteem. This was congruent with the previous research where boy students were shown to be higher than girl students in sub self-esteem related to other people because boy students took the relationship with other people less sensitively than girl students. In the difference of self-esteem according to grade, first grade students were shown to be higher than second grade students in all fields except for teacher-related self-esteem. This was congruent with the previous research where negative self-esteem was assumed to influence high school students more than middle school students because of the pressure of college entrance exam. In the difference of self-esteem according to parents' educational background, father's educational background was shown to be different just in academic ability and general self-esteem but mother's educational background was shown to be statistically significant in difference related to academic ability, general self-esteem, friend-related self-esteem and self-related self-esteem. In the difference of self-esteem according to family monthly income, significant result was shown only in academic ability and general self-esteem.
Second, The demand level for international exchange according to self-esteem of youths was shown not to be different. This was thought to be because the level of longing and interest related to other countries and races are different according to the recognition and knowledge already possessed by students.
Third, the recognition and attitude(attractiveness factor, superiority factor, rationality factor, gentleness factor) toward Southeast asians according to the self-esteem of youths were shown to be significantly different according to each field but in total self-esteem, significant difference was shown in attractiveness factor and rationality factor. This was thought to be because the youths of pur country had a lot of curiosity to know closely located Southeast cultures but usually recognized the cultures as inferior sub-cultures to ours.
Fourth, the difference of acceptance level of foreign immigrant workers according to self-esteem of youths was shown to be significant. Especially, the acceptance level of foreign immigrant workers according to academic ability, general self-esteem, friend-related delf-esteem and teacher-related self-esteem was shown to be statistically significant. The statistically significant difference in the understanding and acceptance of foreign immigrant workers rather than in Southeast asians was thought to be because the youths of our country has more interest and specific knowledge related to the necessity and human right of foreign immigrant workers than Southeast asians who were considered to be inferior vaguely.
Fifth, in the acceptance level of Southeast asians according to the sex of youths, girl students were more positive than boy students. In the acceptance level of foreign immigrant workers, the answering tendency was different according to the questions and girl students were more positive than boy students in the necessity and mind to accept related to foreign immigrant workers and boy students usually had less wariness and the sense of discriminative treatment toward foreign immigrant workers compared to girl students. In the difference in acceptance of other races and cultures according to grade, first grade was shown to be more positive and acceptable than second grade students. This was thought to be because the correlation in that self-esteem of first grade students was also shown to be higher than second grade students existed.
This research was intended to offer basic material to set new goal of the education of social studies as a subject of high school of our country which is rapidly entering multi-cultured society due to the increase of international marriage and foreign immigrant workers by analyzing the significant influence of self-esteem of youths on the understanding and acceptance of other races and cultures based on evidence. The author of this research expect that the follow-up researches will be continually carried out based on this research to explore the role of school education to raise youths of our country as true world citizens who can understand and accept other races and cultures much better.