The purpose of this study is to provide academic suggestions for developing
lifelong erudition program, especially focusing on the multicultural perspective. In
particular, the study investigated what institutes for multicultural education
operate for multicultural families and how subjects and environment in the
multicultural institutes educate them. Through this process, this study
illuminated how multicultural families have been excluded from educational
opportunities and what society needs for overcoming those impregnable
situations.
Currently, South Korea also has various types of multicultural families with
the globalization. However, local situation needs to be investigated through the
cultural and historical local context. Because South Korea had been a
single-race nation historically, people in South Korea usually think of the
multicultural education only for those who are immigrants. For developing
localized educational program of South Korea, we need to realize the exact
situation, in which multicultural families have been laid in inequality. What they
really suffer from is the educational system in which they cannot have
opportunities to exposure themselves in a proper education. Indeed, formal
educational institutes, including schools are not the very location they can rely
on. Curricula of the school in South Korea are severely influenced by power
relationship of social status as well as hidden curricula which are restricted
from several regulations only for ‘Usual’ family. With those cultural and
historical reasons, educational activities for multicultural families have been
replaced as simple activities, such as exploring superficial Korean culture and
learning basic Korean.
With the perspective of lifelong erudition, multicultural education is not a
process of assimilation from other society to ours. It connotes to educate society
as a whole. To increase cultural sensitivity, we need to develop the multicultural
education which is not for ‘them’, but for ‘us’. What are needs for the society is
to increase cultural sensitivity and use it as social capital.