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The term “multi-culture” was coined with the aim of overcoming multiple types of issues created by the conflicts between mainstream culture and subculture, or among many subcultures, under the context of intimate relation among various cultures. Multicultural education can be understood under the same context as well. In other words, it is just a matter of course that more frequent encounters and contacts among cultures bring about not only positive effects but as also conflicting discords and problems, and consequently the needs of multicultural education have arisen to overcome such conflicts and problems. An American educator James A. Banks saw multicultural education as a reform movement mainly based on reconstituting curriculum and educational system with the aim of ensuring equal educational opportunities for members of diverse gender, language, social class, and ethnic groups. The U.S. educational encyclopedia defines multicultural education to put emphasis on various contributions made by cultural and ethnical social groups to the society, and to select and implement relevant educational curriculum. Therefore, multicultural education is to instill knowledge, attitude, and value to appreciate the cultures of other groups on equal terms, while at the same time eradicate prejudice against cultures different from ours and place much value on mutual understanding and equal relation with peoples of diverse cultural groups. Given such definition, the target and content of multicultural education should include the natives who should lead their lives along with the students from multicultural or immigrated families. This paper examines legal grounds for Korean multicultural education and investigates realistic issues in learning of children from multicultural families.
다문화 교육이란 다른 집단의 문화를 동등하게 가치로운 것으로 인식하는 지식, 태도, 가치를 갖도록 하는 교육인 동시에 자신의 문화와 다른 문화에 대한 편견을 없애고 다양한 문화집단의 사람들과 상호이해 및 평등 관계를 중시하는 교육이라고 할 수 있다. 다문화 교육의 정의가 이상과 같다고 볼 때, 다문화 교육의 대상과 내용에는 이주외국인이나 다문화 가정 학생들만이 아니라 이들과 함께 살아가야 하는 내국인이 포함되어야 할 것이다. 본 글에서는 우리나라 다문화 교육의 법적 근거를 살펴보고 실제 다문화가정 자녀들의 학습에 있어 현실적인 문제점에 대해 알아보고자 한다.
