최근 한국 사회는 외국인 노동자, 결혼 이민자 등의 流入으로 다문화 사회로 빠르게 轉移되어 가고 있으므로 다문화 교육이 절실히 필요하다. 그러나 오늘날 까지 우리교육은 전통문화를 고수하는 교육에 중점을 두어 왔다. 특히 한문과 교 육은 전통문화의 고수에 중심을 두었기 때문에 타문화에 대한 관심과 이해가 부 족하였다. 다문화 교육이란 세계화 시대에 따른 다양한 문화, 인종, 사회에 속한 집단들이 각기 자신의 고유 언어와 문화를 지키면서 주류사회와 공존하며 사회에 다양한 기여를 한다는 사실을 강조하여 타문화의 가치를 인정하는 교육을 말한다. 우리나라에서 다문화교육에 관심을 갖기 시작한 것은 제7차 교육과정에서 국제이해 교육과 세계시민 교육의 중요성이 제기 되었으며, 이후 2007년 개정 교육과 정에서 다문화 교육이 全敎科에 본격적으로 반영되었다. 한문과 교육에서의 다문화 교육의 準據는 2007년 개정 한문과 교육과정에서 찾을 수 있다. 한문과 교육 목표 가운데, “한자 문화에 대한 기초적인 지식을 익혀 한자 문화권 내에서의 상호 이해와 교류 증진에 기여하는 태도를 지닌다.”는 漢字 를 매개로 한 다문화 교육을 실시해야 한다는 것을 의미한다. 2007년 개정 교육과정에 따라 집필되어 검정에 통과하여 현재 사용되고 있는 중학교 1학년 한문교과서는 15종이다. 이들 15종의 교과서는 다문화를 이해하기 위한 原典자료의 부족과 중학교 한문교육용 기초 한자 900자를 수용하여야 하는 어려움으로 인하여 본문의 영역에서 반영한 교과서는 1종도 없으며, 보충학습 자 료나 삽화 등으로 다문화의 내용을 수용하고 있다. 내용은 설날과 같은 명절의 명칭과 別食의 비교(6종), 한․중․일의 의․식․ 주 문화 비교(5종), 한․중․일의 한자형태 비교(4종), 속담에 대한 비교(3종), 공 부에 대한 의미 비교(2종), 형제자매의 발음비교(1종) 등이 있다. 오늘날과 같은 다민족․다문화 사회에서는 다문화 교육이 반드시 필요하다. 한 문과 교육은 ‘仁’과 같은 사랑과 관용의 정신을 바탕으로 하기 때문에, 다문화 교 육에 유용한 교과이므로 앞으로 집필할 2009년 개정 한문 교과서에는 이를 적극 반영하여야 한다.
본고는 1980년대 이후 새롭게 주목받고 있는 새로운 한자문화권의 특성을 밝히 기 위해 중국의 한 대를 중심으로 형성되기 시작한 한자문화권의 생성과 변화를 서술하면서, 그 안에 중심하고 있는 의미를 살펴보는데 집중하였다. 이를 통해 한자문화권이라는 명칭의 문제와 더불어 근대 이후 생성된 한자문화 권을 신한자문화권, “Han-character Culture sphere”라는 용어를 새롭게 제안하 였다. 또한, 현재의 입장에서 한자와 한문교육의 의미를 각 국가만의 특수한 개별 교과라는 차원을 넘어 세계 한자문화권의 보편적이면서 기본적인 교양 교육으로 성장하기 위해 우리가 생각해 보아야 할 9가지를 제안하였다. 그 제안의 내용은 대부분 지금의 한자문화권에서 한자·한문교육이 보편 교양 과목으로 인식이 전환 되기 위해서 기본적으로 갖추어야 할 형식적 요소와 내용적 요소의 선정과 조직 뿐 아니라 관련 연구자들의 상호 이해와 교류의 중요성 인식을 통한 공동 연구와 교재 이용, 개발에 관한 것들이다.
근대 이전 동아시아 여러 나라의 글쓰기는 한문이었다. 당시 동아시아의 세계는 한자·한문 문명권에 속해 있었기 때문에 정치·외교·문화적인 소통을 위하여 당연 히 한문의 글쓰기가 필요했다. 그런데 19세기 후반 이후 이런 전통의 글쓰기와 인 식체계에 큰 변화가 있었다. 표기체계의 획기적인 전환과 함께 문체의 구조적 문 제가 발생하였다. 한문을 보편적으로 구사해오던 동아시아 어문의 질서로부터 이 탈, 근대적인 국민어가 탄생하였다. 근대적인 전환·변혁이 하나의 구체적인 사회 적 현상이 되었기에 그에 대한 언어적인 표현으로 드러난 것이다. 동아시아의 근 대적인 전환과 변혁은 과거의 문물제도와는 다른 학술문화와 지식 체계의 전환을 의미했다. 그런데, 이 시기에 동아시아는 근대 문명의 새로운 언어로 ‘한자 어휘’를 대량산출한다. 그것은 당시 서구의 지식과 학문의 체계를 동아시아권의 언어로 번역하는 과정에서 일어난 일이다. 흥미로운 것은 그렇게도 부정하려고 하고 타자화하려 했던 한자·한문의 문화에서 비롯된 한자 어휘로 서구어를 번역했다는 사실이다. 즉 통사구조는 자국의 구어와 일치시키고, 문장의 내용을 구성하는 어휘는 ‘근대 한자 어휘’로 대체했다. 이는 서양을 수용하면서 언어에 있어서 자국어 운동을 전 개하며 문자표기와 문장을 언어와 일치시키려는 운동이다. 그러나 20세기의 중국을 제외한 동아시아 각국은 한자 어휘마저도 거부하는 어 문 정책을 폈다. 이런 상황 속에서 한국은 2007년 개정 교육과정과 2009년 개정 교육과정에서 초등학교는 여전히 한자 교육을 배제하고, 중·고등학교의 한문 교육 도 이전에 비해 훨씬 축소되었다. 따라서 근대 형성된 동아시아의 한자 어휘 문화 권도 위기를 맞고 있다. 이에 아시아 여러 나라들의 학술활동의 국제적인 연대가 필요하다.
Our society is changing rapidly to a multicultural society, but if we disrespect migrant workers, married immigrants and multicultural family children, who came from foreign countries and have been incorporated as our society members, only because of their different skin color, appearance and language and treat their culture with prejudice, such racial discrimination will cause cultural conflicts and undermine the stability of Korea society. In order for them to be the true members of our society, we need to give much consideration not only to national policies but also to social consensus and school education for minimizing their social and psychological conflicts with our culture and reduce social consumption resulting from such conflicts. Culture refers to internal ways of thinking, external behaviors, etc. shared by a specific group through a long process of life experience. Traditional culture is formed and developed collectively by a life community, and reflects their production activities and sentiments, so it has unique characteristics distinguished from the culture of other groups. Traditional culture defines the order and sentiment of life in the group members, and gives a sense of belonging to the community so that the members have identity. Multi‐culture originally meant the coexistence of diverse native cultures retained by minority races and people with their originality preserved rather than being integrated into the dominant culture in multi‐racial and multi‐ethnic countries like the U.S. These days, however, it has an expanded meaning, that is, respecting the originality of minority cultures and pursuing the coexistence of such cultures in the native culture of the mainstream society. In the process that a nation develops its culture, it may receive foreign cultures and change its traditional culture. What is important in this process is developing new culture without losing traditional culture. If traditional culture declines and fades away, overwhelmed by powerful foreign culture, it cannot be desirable succession and development of culture. Multicultural education originated from education for understanding the national background and cultural contributions of American immigrants in the late 1920s, and is also related to the term ‘national studies’ for enhancing the self‐identity of minority peoples in the early 1960s. From the late 1960s, the term ‘multiethnic education’ was used to mean that all children should learn various cultures in the U.S., and in the 1970s, the term ‘multicultural education’ began to be used as its meaning today. Banks, a representative scholar in multicultural education, defined multicultural education as “A reform movement for giving peoples from diverse genders, languages, social classes, races and groups equal opportunities for learning,” and Bennett explained it as “an approach to teach and learn based on democratic values and beliefs in order to promote cultural diversity in a culturally diverse society or an independent world.” Moreover, Morrison said that multicultural education is education for preparing students to understand, perceive correctly and respect others from different races, genders, socio‐economic statuses, languages and cultural backgrounds, and ultimately to live, communicate, and act for common goals in multicultural society.In this way, multicultural education is a concept based on diversity and pluralism as well as on democracy, equality, human rights, social justice, etc. Furthermore, targeting not only children from migrant worker, married immigrant and multicultural families with minority culture but also all students from mainstream culture, it aims to help them recognize that our society is now entering into a multiethnic and multicultural society and be able to develop harmonious relations in the multiethnic and multicultural society. In other words, multicultural education is to emphasize and teach that, in the present age of globalization, groups of different culture, race and society should maintain their own native language and culture and, at the same time, coexist with the mainstream culture and make various contributions to the society. Multicultural education can be divided into ‘multicultural education for mutual understanding among cultures,’ ‘education responding culturally,’ ‘cross‐cultural education,’ ‘cultural pluralism of education,’ ‘multicultural education as human experience,’ etc. Moreover, multicultural education has been developed through processes such as multiple culture education, international understanding education, anti‐prejudice education, and globalization education, and may share conceptual denotations with human right education, anti‐war peace education, and ecological environment education. In other words, multicultural education intends to help students understand the diversity of people with various backgrounds in terms of culture, race, gender and social class, have positive attitude and perception toward the diversity, admit cultural differences from the viewpoint of cultural relativism, and acknowledge values in other cultures. It was from the 7th National Curriculum that Korea began to take interest in multicultural education. At that time, people began to recognize the importance of international understanding education and global citizen education and the necessity to understand culture diversity in other countries. In response to these demands, the 7th National Curriculum introduced some contents for international understanding and multicultural understanding mainly in subjects related to foreign languages and social studies. Later the 2007 Revised National Curriculum reflected multicultural education in all the subjects. That is, the Generals of the 2007 Revised National Curriculum suggest multicultural education as one of 35 interdisciplinary themes of learning, and furthermore, direct that it should be reflected in the development of textbooks. The Korean government is executing various multiculturalist policies to cope with transition to multicultural society and resultant problems. That is, as the number of multicultural family children attending elementary and secondary schools is increasing with the expansion of married immigrants and migrant workers and there should be strengthened educational support to them, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development made Plans to Provide Educational Support to Multicultural Family Children but most of the contents aim to help foreign workers and married immigrants adjust themselves to racially homogeneous Korean society by learning Korean language and traditional culture. This suggests that while our society is changing rapidly to a multicultural society but multiculturalist policies and multicultural education are still insisting on Koreanization through infusing the myth of homogeneous race and culture and forcing assimilation to Korean national culture. What is more, through its Study on Teaching‐Learning Support for Multicultural Education, Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation suggested the objectives of multicultural education as follows: first, to understand cultural diversity and differences and strengthen cultural identity; second, to develop tolerance of understanding and respective native culture as well as other cultures and the attitude of contributing to the recreation of culture; and third, to promote a sense of community, the qualities of democratic citizen, peaceful settlement of conflicts, cooperative attitude, respect for human rights, and social justice. In order to achieve these goals, in addition, it proposed programs: first, to provide opportunities to experience other cultures; second, to understand the own traditional culture; and third, to promote international understanding. However, these proposals focus on education for multicultural family children, so are not sufficient for giving multicultural education to ordinary students. In multicultural society resulting from globalization, our education should seek mutual understanding and coexistence of different languages and cultures of diverse races and people rather than the transfer of traditional culture based on our homogeneous language and race. Moreover, education in multicultural society should place emphasis more on the majority’s understanding and tolerance of minorities’ race, people, and culture than on assimilation of immigrants from foreign countries to the mainstream society. Accordingly, though already late, Korean people should also admit ‘multiculturalism’ as a basic attribute of the society instead of clinging to the purity of language and people, and receive and respect cultural diversity for the coexistence of multiple cultures in one society or one country. That is, school education should include not only education for multicultural family students to understand our language and culture as the mainstream but also education for the majority of our society to understand and tolerate the cultures of minorities including immigrants from foreign countries, half‐blooded children from them, and North Korean defectors. The fundamental objective of Korean education is “to build up the people’s character under the ideology of Hongikingan (devotion to the benefits of mankind) and to equip individuals with abilities for independent life and qualities as a democratic citizen so that they may be able to lead a noble life and to contribute to the development of democratic state and the realization of the co‐prosperity of mankind.”
Co‐prosperity of mankind is impossible without overcoming nationalism, which gives the top priority to the superiority and benefits of my own country. That is,the true co‐prosperity of mankind is possible only when we acknowledge and respect differences in history, culture, religion, language and customs between my people and others. This means that, in order to educate people required in the age of globalization, even the education of traditional culture should concentrate on raising global citizens from the viewpoint of multiculturalism.