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Education key to multicultural society
Kim Mee-sook, left, and Lue Hea-sook, recipients of the awards for best cultural diversity lecturers for 2015 / Courtesy of Korean Institute for Healthy Family
By Kim Se-jeong
By Kim Se-jeong
“We are not always in need of help. Please stop looking at us like we are poor.”
This comment, which immigrants who move to Korea after marriage often express, is a prime example of Korean prejudice toward almost 800,000 marriage immigrants and their families.
Experts point out that prejudice can be a major obstacle to a country becoming truly multicultural.
While almost 1 million people in Korea are expected to have multicultural backgrounds by 2020, Korean society is not very open and flexible toward them.
To address this issue, since 2012 the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has offered a training program to nurture lecturers who teach cultural diversity to the public, especially children.
So far, the ministry has trained almost 300 people, who have given lectures about tolerance and understanding to about 44,000 people on more than 700 occasions this year alone, mostly at schools, children’s welfare centers, police stations, Army units and factories.
Kim Mee-sook, 47, a counselor from Seoul, and Lue Hea-sook, 63, a retired school principal from Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, are two such visiting lecturers. Last month they won the best lecturers’ awards for 2015.
Both counselors interact mainly with school children and give lectures to them.
“It (education on multiculturalism) should start with understanding your neighbors in the classroom,” Kim says. “It doesn’t matter whether he or she has an Uzbek mother or not. Everyone around you, either Korean or foreigner, is different and therefore has a different cultural background.
“Education should start by teaching the children the importance of understanding and respecting other students.”
Kim also believes this kind of education needs to operate on both sides: “It’s not just about non-immigrant students trying to understand immigrant students. These immigrant children should also be taught to understand other students.”
Lue believes the same, and goes a step further.
“Knowing isn’t enough,” she says. “How do we make the children act accordingly? I think it’s only possible through appealing to their hearts.”
Lue says she is developing teaching materials about cultural diversity which can appeal to children’s hearts rather than their minds.
The retired principal says that training school teachers is also critical.
“Very few teachers understand the importance of cultural diversity, and don’t have much to say when they come to a chapter about multiculturalism,” she says.
The two teachers also stress the importance of early education, saying that it would be a good thing if cultural diversity education was compulsory for elementary school students.
Education about multiculturalism is not compulsory at schools, where students learn from textbooks that mention the topic only briefly.
Schools that invite lecturers such as Kim and Lue are few, and the two are only invited for extra-curricular sessions. Changing the school curriculum requires consultation with the Ministry of Education.
“(In inviting lecturers,) the determination of school principals is very important,” Lue says.