Study on Cause and Countermeasure to SOCIAL MISFITS of Children from Multicultural Family

Abstract

Since the number of members who have a variety of langue and cultural backgrounds due to the expansion of exchanges between countries and cultures recently is increased, the Korean society changes to a multicultural society rapidly and the number of multicultural families is increasing. As the Korean society enters into the multicultural society, the number of multicultural background learners with various language and cultural backgrounds is swiftly increasing at school, a problem of Korean education for them is raised as a current issue and the phenomenon of not adjusting school life because of failure of communication, low school performance, identity crisis, and school violence problems, is increasing as well. Recently, efforts to cultivate social adaptability of children from multicultural family through establishments of language education policy, education for understanding multiculture and multicultural alternative school. Yet, children from multicultural family are suffering from adaptation to school and to social lives. To cultivate their social adaptability, their self-esteem and identity should be established. Moreover, broader bond of sympathy to support language and multicultural education should be formed in a community level, and various supports and policies at a social level should be prepared based on the bond. This study aims at exploring measures to have children from multicultural family obtain a sense of belonging and identity in school and social lives in South Korea and adapt successfully to the community. Therefore, causes of social misfit of children from multicultural family are classified into intrinsic aspects – damaged self-esteem and self-identity confusion and Korean exclusiveness – and extrinsic aspects - academic underachievement and school life misfit from lacking communication capability, economic difficulty, insufficiency of active multiculture education policy and school violence – and are observed. As countermeasures to social misfit of children from multicultural family, bilingual culture education, Korean language education and multicultural education programs in educational aspects, and active response by the police, preparation of institutional measures to prevent crimes, various development and reinforcement of socio-cultural programs and institutional solutions to solve economic difficulty in social aspects are suggested.