Yamada Takako
In September 2007, my son, who was in the first grade at the time, said in an after-school ‘multicultural education class’ that started from the first semester at school, “I’m a freshman, how can I study Hangul for 2 hours with my 6th grade sister? Now I don’t want to go.” I was worried. Since it was the first experiment at school, it seems that ‘multicultural education’ had no choice but to gather ‘children of multicultural families’ after school and do it in one room. However, the son was still in first grade, and the first grader was alone in the room. “Why do I have to go back to school and study Korean again after I get home? I promised to play with my classmates, but my mother is Japanese, so I can’t speak Korean, so I have to say that I take classes at school after school.” Why am I the only one at school? go back to study?
Through this situation, I thought, ‘If I don’t want to go to school’, I thought I should take a break. During the summer vacation, after receiving a survey from the ‘Research Team for Supporting the Growth of Children of International Marriage’, they said that there was no problem in cognitive and language development, only in terms of social-emotional development, and lack of confidence in the relationship with teachers and peers. As it was also stated in the ‘Measurement Results of Children’s Development of Multicultural Families’, I thought that what I needed right now was to draw interest in what I was interested in and how I would like to learn rather than unilaterally studying Hangul. Because it is easy to lose interest in studying if you force yourself to study from a young age, but if you know that you have to read a lot of books in order to study what you want to do, I thought that I could increase my Hangeul skills. There was also a content that I realized from my own experience that there would be more to learn while playing with children of the same age. For that reason, it was also true that there was a lot of anxiety while allowing me to play with my friends instead of taking a Korean class. Because I myself did not receive education in Korea, I also wanted to know what the education system was like and what would become of ‘multicultural education’ in it.
school teacher misunderstanding
However, since the teacher in charge emphasized that our school provides it for free, I felt it was difficult to even give personal counseling after my son stopped going to class. Because, when this ‘multicultural class’ started, I was the only parent who participated in the ‘opening ceremony’ of the school, and it was also true that I could not feel the atmosphere to ask questions comfortably. So, I searched the Internet by myself, asked the mother of a ‘multicultural family’ who attends a nearby school, or ‘a question to a person concerned with multicultural education,’ but later the multicultural education teacher criticized my class about what I was doing various investigations. It seems that they saw it as a , and misunderstood it.
Later, in the second semester, my son, who could not participate in the school’s ‘multicultural class’, also got a call asking him to come because it was the ‘final ceremony’, so I persuaded my son that he didn’t like it because it was the last, and took him out with him. However, instead of welcoming, the teacher started saying, “Mother seems to be misunderstanding something…”, and I couldn’t keep up with the class because my son was coming to class late. He said with anger that he found out and talked about the story of not participating in class.
Tears shed by difficulties in communication
I think it was my big mistake. When discussing something, it seems that the principle was not to say the name of the school even if the other person asked. Even though I was just curious, it seems that the explanation was insufficient, or that I was merely criticizing the teacher. I didn’t criticize the teacher, I just wanted to see if there was anything else I could learn personally because it was difficult to keep up with the school’s ‘multicultural education’. I wanted to explain that feeling, but seeing the angry teacher, I had no choice but to apologize.
Later, when I went home, tears came to my eyes, and I thought about that time. What is needed for multicultural education in this country is not unilateral Hangeul education, but first to understand ‘multicultural families’, to resolve misunderstandings that may arise because of multicultural families, without denying ‘multiculturalism’, and as ‘multicultural’ The idea was that it would be more important to think about what we could do together and acknowledge it.