유교의 ‘忠恕’를 통해 본 다문화교육의 원리

Abstract

This paper investigates loyalty(忠, Chung) and reciprocity(恕, Seo) in Confucianism as the basic principle of multi-cultural education in modern society. Multi-cultural society is based on a community with various cultural backgrounds. So it is necessary for members of the community to respect and consider the cultural difference as problems for balance and harmony. Multi-cultural education seeks the change of education considering this situation. Especially, those should respect various cultures and see mutual-relationship with other cultural groups while involving more than one cultural group. Although multi-cultural society in western society is very interested in multi-cultural education, in case of Korea it is a beginning level to seek a teaching method and to correct the concept. In this time, the spirit of loyalty and reciprocity in Confucianism would contribute to provide the basic principle of multi-cultural education. Loyalty is for achieving self-devotion and reciprocity is for caring and understanding other people upon self-devotion. This practicing of loyalty and reciprocity concretely shows the way of education which we should learn in the community. Loyalty is the way of self-learning for self-completion and reciprocity is a considering and caring mind for others who have other cultures. So loyalty and reciprocity could be those who are doing self-devotion with self-respect of unique cultural tradition, and core of multi-cultural education which is respecting and caring others who have other cultures at the same time. In final, the spirit of loyalty and reciprocity could reflect our circumstance in multi-cultural society and work as the principle of education enough considering situation and nature of others.