The number of foreign residents exceeds one million mark, which is rapidly turning our society into a multicultural society. In a society that gets increasingly multicultural, multicultural education should be provided in social studies class that accentuates nurturing eligible democratic citizens.
The purpose of this study was to examine multicultural education in middle school textbooks. It's specifically meant to make a definition of multiculural education and to investigate multicultural education policies of Japan, the United States and France and the implications of their policies for our multicultural education, since those countries had already been multicultural earlier than our country. Besides, educational support plans for children from multicultural families announced by the Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development and the Ministry of Education, Science & Technology between 2006 and 2008 were reviewed to get an accurate grip on the state of multicultural education geared toward children from multicultural families.
One unit each, which covered and reflected multicultural education the most, was selected from the seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade social studies textbooks of the 7th national middle school curriculum. The selected units were analyzed from a perspective of multicultural education to find out the weight of that education and the related structure and content of the textbooks to suggest some of the right directions for multicultural education.
The findings of the study were as follows;
First, even the units of the seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade middle school textbooks that covered multicultural education the most and were most likely to reflect it didn't deal with multiculture properly.
Second, even the same units of the four textbooks took a different approach toward cultural diversity and relativism depending on the viewpoint of the writers, and there were another differences among the textbooks in explanation, illustration and content system according to what the textbooks focused on.
Third, multicultural education wasn't yet on the right track since that was merely provided as part of globalization education or international education. That wasn't conducted properly though Korean society was turning into multicultural society.
Fourth, the textbooks just involved outdated materials, which resulted in failing to keep up with reality that our society was increasingly multicultural and multiracial, and the textbooks might instill improper prejudice into students and make them hold a biased view of foreign countries.
Based on the findings of the study, there are some suggestions about how to remedy the situations-
First, the revision and supplementation of the textbooks are required. It's not an easy task to revamp the current curriculum and textbooks at once, and the curriculum and textbooks should partially be modified or supplemented to provide the right multicultural education.
Second, the production of materials and the supply of learning manuals are requested, and multicultural programs should be prepared. To modify and supplement the textbooks, appropriate teaching materials and learning manuals should be developed.
Third, multiculture should be taught as a separate unit to teach the multiple components of culture in detail, to provide learners with authentic multicultural education, to change their mind-set and to get them to be well ready for current and future society.
Fourth, prolonged and well-planned teacher education and training should be offered. Teachers who teach multiculture should learn about multicultural education first to urge every student to have a friendly relationship with children from multicultural families whom they study with.
Fifth, the government, relevant organizations and all sorts of civic groups should pay attention to multicultural education and pull their weight to actualize the above-mentioned reform measures.