Multicultural education is a rather young section of scientific knowledge, which attracts the attention of not only educators, but also the general public. This is an adequate reaction of teachers to the difficult situation in the world today. Intergroup, interpersonal, interethnic conflicts, constant religious and political contradictions confirm the urgency of the problem.
Relevance
Multicultural education of preschool children is an opportunity to form a tolerant attitude towards representatives of other nationalities in the younger generation.
The development of this direction in modern pedagogy and educational practice is explained by the essence of the processes of humanization and democratization of social life, the desire to create a society in which a respectful attitude to each person is welcomed, the rights and dignities of an individual citizen are protected.
Theoretical aspects
Multicultural education is a pedagogical democratic response of multiethnic and multicultural societies to the situation in the modern world. It can be considered one of the priority pedagogical problems facing world civilization.
Multicultural upbringing and education can be considered as an indispensable tool for overcoming the crisis, a way to harmonize relations between representatives of different cultures and civilizations.
In the framework of political and economic integration, significant importance is given to national specifics, including the process of forming the younger generation.
Relevance
Multicultural education of children allows maintaining the diversity of small and large nations in the context of the ongoing globalization of the modern world. It becomes a means of preservation and subsequent development of ethnic cultures, their involvement in the practice of training and education. Such an approach allows solving urgent problems that currently exist in pedagogy.
International trends
Multicultural education of schoolchildren is relevant in the framework of expanding cooperation between different countries. It is due to the growing struggle of racial and ethnic minorities for their rights in societies characterized by a multi-ethnic composition.
Countries in which upbringing in a multicultural school is provided to some extent can be divided into several groups:
- having deep and long-standing national cultural differences (Spain, Russia);
- become multicultural because of their colonial past (Holland, France, Great Britain);
- those in which voluntary mass immigration has become the cause of multiculturalism (Australia, Canada, USA).
Development directions
The main means of multicultural education currently used in pedagogy:
- support for ethnic minorities;
- multicultural education, which is accompanied by the adoption of measures against ethnocentrism;
- bilingual training.
These areas are reflected in special educational programs.
Principles of education
It focuses on several pedagogical principles:
- education of high moral qualities and human dignity;
- the formation of tolerance, the desire for mutual cooperation;
- development of ideas about the diversity of cultures.
Multicultural education is a thoughtful process aimed at creating optimal conditions for self-realization of a person, a positive perception of other cultures.
Parenting goals
What are the goals of multicultural education? Activities implemented as part of educational programs can be divided into three groups of goals: equality, pluralism, and unification.
Objectives:
- respect and preservation of cultural diversity;
- observance of equal rights to upbringing and education;
- the development of spiritual values in the framework of political, national, economic factors.
Multicultural education is a way of forming a creative personality, regardless of religion or nationality.
Landmarks
Multicultural education is built on the basis of the following guidelines:
- sociocultural identification of an individual;
- the formation of a positive attitude of the younger generation towards a multicultural environment;
- improving social communication skills.
The presence of a multicultural component in various academic disciplines makes it possible to solve a dual task: to encourage students' interest in acquiring new knowledge and to offer them different points of view on the world around them.
Characteristic of multicultural education
It involves taking into account the educational and cultural interests of various ethnic and national minorities. It provides:
- adaptation of a child to different values in a world filled with diverse cultures, interaction between people who have different traditions;
- focus on cooperation of individual cultures;
- departure from the educational monopoly in relation to representatives of other nationalities.
Based on these landmarks, topics are formed. Multicultural education is aimed at cultivating in the child the spirit of mutual understanding and solidarity in the name of peaceful life, preserving the cultural characteristics of different peoples.
Modern tendencies
Currently, the world community has a tendency to self-education of a person throughout his life. She suggests:
- continuity between kindergartens, schools, higher educational institutions in solving educational problems;
- the process of constant self-education of the child throughout life;
- the realization of a person’s desire to constantly enrich the experience of social relationships, the search for contacts with nature, technology, and other people.
It is focused on the formation of every child’s planetary thinking, awareness of their belonging to the human community, not only in the present and future, but also in the past.
The education system is the sum of the interrelated principles and goals of the educational process, the techniques and methods for their gradual implementation within the framework of a specific social structure (state, educational institution, school, family) and the fulfillment of the social order of society.
Spartan education
Among the pedagogical heritage associated with the formation of tolerance, of interest are the methods used in the Middle Ages, the era of Antiquity, the Renaissance. Among the most famous systems of education can be noted the Spartan method.
Her task was to educate a hardy warrior - a representative of the community. Until the age of seven, the baby was brought up in the family by nurses - nannies. Further, the state assumed responsibility for the formation of moral and spiritual qualities. The process consisted of three stages.
First, at the age of 7 to 15 years, children received the necessary reading and writing skills, their physical hardening was carried out. The boys slept on thin sheets of straw, walked barefoot. As they matured, they were accustomed to an ascetic lifestyle, as well as to a brief statement of their thoughts.
At fourteen, boys were consecrated as eirens - members of the community who had certain civil rights.
The second stage of education lasted from 15 to 20 years. To the minimum literacy added training in music and singing. Teenagers were kept in hunger, they themselves learned to get food. At the age of twenty, the boys were initiated into warriors; they received weapons.
The third stage lasted from 20 to 30 years, at which time the young warrior acquired the status of a member of the community, had all the rights and obligations.
After going through all three stages of education, the young man perfectly mastered the sword, spear, dart, as well as all other types of weapons common at that time.
The Spartan educational methodology turned out to be hypertrophied military training with the existing ignorance of the younger generation. Gradually, she was reduced to physical testing and strength training.
Athenian educational system
She became an example of a technique aimed at harmonious and comprehensive development of the individual. The main principle used in it was a competitive form in music, dance, gymnastics, verbal conversations. The implementation of this system took place in stages. Until the age of seven, a family was engaged in raising children. In the period of 7-16 years, they studied at the gymnastic and musical school, receiving musical, literary, military sports education and education.
The second stage (16-18 years) included the improvement by young men of their education, the development of their intellectual abilities in gymnasiums.
The result of the achievements of the young man was considered to be his stay in ephebia (18-20 years). These public institutions were created to improve military skills. This system was closest to multicultural education. She was guided by the mastering by the younger generation of a set of virtues, which were later called the program of "seven free arts": arithmetic, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, dialectics, grammar, music.
For many subsequent generations, this system became the basis for the education of the younger generation.
Conclusion
For different peoples, elements of religious education were embodied in concrete forms. Multicultural education is especially relevant today, when peaceful citizens die due to religious conflicts.
This technique pays special attention to several pedagogical principles:
- the formation of tolerance, desire and readiness for dialogue and cooperation;
- education of morality and spirituality of the younger generation.
The main function of multicultural education is to remove the contradictions between dominant nations and ethnic minorities. A similar process involves the mutual adaptation of ethnic groups, the elimination of the "dictatorship of the majority."
The use of this technique contributes to the formation of a younger generation of ideas about the relationship between different cultures and religions, the awareness of the importance of respect for people of other nationalities for their own self-realization. That is why multicultural education is included in school curricula permitted under the Second Generation Federal State Educational Standard.