Recently the multicultural families are continuously increasing by foreign brides especially coming from Southeast Asia, for example Philippines, Thailand and China. Most of them are coming to get married to old bachelors in rural areas. The governmen...
Recently the multicultural families are continuously increasing by foreign brides especially coming from Southeast Asia, for example Philippines, Thailand and China. Most of them are coming to get married to old bachelors in rural areas. The government began to pay attention to them as one of the ways to resolve the problem of low birth rate becoming an important issue nowadays. Above, mass communications are also treating them as an important matter of social integration.
The purpose of this study is to empirically survey the current conditions of educational environments of the multicultural families, and propose some supporting systems for their children. For the purpose, 108 wives of the multicultural families in Jenbuk Province were sampled and interviewed to collect informations about current conditions of their educational environments and attitudes toward children and husbands, and wishes on the government's support for a questionnaire. On the basis of theories about multicultural families like world system theory and various culture theories of cultural impact and conflict, and previous studies on current conditions of the multicultural families, the questionnaire consists of 42 items. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed by frequency, ANOVA, t-test, and correlation analysis.
On the results of this survey, the important facts about the current conditions of educational environments of the multicultural families and the attitudes toward education of their children are as follows;
First, the socio-economic status of the multicultural families are very low. The level of their incomes and properties were low, and the husbands have poor educational backgrounds and jobs.
Second, most of the multi cultural families have two and more children, and they are students of kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools.
Third, most preschool children are being cared in edu-care centers, and their fees are above 240 thousand wons. This means the fees of edu-care centers are a big burden to the multicultural families.
Fourth, children of some families do not go to edu-care centers. The reasons are both economic burdens and low reliance on the quality of edu-care services.
Fifth, some families have difficulties to help their children's assignments because of language problems.
Sixth, some children of the multicultural families have experienced bullying, alienating from their classmates, so-called ‘Wangdda.’ And most families have economic difficulty by private education fees, care costs and etc.
Seventh, most of the multicultural families wish that the government support educational costs of their children, and living costs of low classes.
The results of this survey suggest several policy alternatives of welfare for the multicultural families as follows; First, the government should give economic supports to low class of the multicultural families. Second, it is necessary for the multicultural families to get the educational services of Korean languages. Third, the multicultural families need to know how to avoid their children’s bullying, and easily get professional family counselling services.