Inclusivity, Diversity and Education: The Use of Language and Korean Education
Author bio: Hyewon Kang is a current undergraduate student at King's College London studying International Relations at the Department of War Studies. She is currently working for an intersectionality project within the Department. Her research interests are human rights, international cooperation and Asian foreign affairs.
Abstract: The discourse of inclusive education strives to reduce exclusion and marginalisation of minorities in the educational process by analysing institutional framework and behavioural discrimination. However, exclusion and marginalisation not only happen in physical settings but also in verbal contexts. This post attempts to fill this blank in intellectual discourse to identify how the use of language can exclude minorities by constituting normativeness and symbolic power with practical examples in Korean education.
Language is not just a simple description of objects to convey, understand, and discuss ideas in conversation. It reflects historical and contemporary concerns over particular issues, implies socially constructed meaning of objects in a symbolic way, consolidates or spreads pre-existing ideas or prejudices in a society and justifies hierarchical precedence of privileged groups in the name of ‘naturalness’ or ‘normativeness’ (Edvina Bešić, 2020). The normalization of a particular form of language and terms does not merely describe common situations in practice but involves exclusive privilege and power relations in educational system. The way that one selects patterns of language for its purposes often results in unexpected and unintended outcomes.
The power of the uncritical acceptance of language and its problems has been addressed by Bourdieu Pierre in his reflections on symbolic power (1991). Symbolic power is defined as “a power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of confirming or transforming the vision of the word and, thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself, an almost magical power which enables one to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained through force (whether physical or economic), by virtue of the specific effect of mobilization.” This linkage between linguistic understanding and behaviours in practice shows that the symbolic power of language can intensify discrimination against minorities in education by reinforcing and legitimising pre-existing beliefs, visions, and their consequent actions. The one who cannot find himself or herself in terms, languages, and discourse also cannot find his or her representatives, which can produce various educational problems such as psychological torpidity, a lack of target research, bullies, and low teaching outcomes by abnormalising minorities. In other words, education which does not contemplate selection of inclusive language to avoid intersectional discrimination, produces unequal opportunities of education and huge differences in learning outcomes by inventing, producing and intensifying power relations.
At this point, intersectionality can be a useful guidance to examine the importance of inclusive language. Intersectionality is defined as “[a] framework … to account for the dynamic and complex ways that race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, ability and age shape individual identities and social life” (Fischman & Tefera 2018). Intersectional framework gives educational aspiration and imperative to investigate how privileges or disadvantages of different social categories and power relations are embedded in the selection of words. According to this view, an individual who has multiple identity markers will experience more disadvantaged education than another who has a single identity. For example, disabled Black women suffer from more social discrimination and disadvantage than white women. This explanation of the presence of multiple identities shows how the marginalising effect of exclusive words can be intensified through intersectional framework.
Despite the importance of selecting language, there has been a long-standing carelessness of language selection in the educational process. Especially, the education in South Korea is a clear case that shows the underlying power relations within minorities in the absence of the discourse of intersectionality. For example, the Korean term bumonim, which means parents, is used to describe main rearers of children, but there are two interpretation to be found in terms of its exclusiveness and power relations. First, it does not consider families that are different from the general form, i.e. that main rearers are mother and father. There are diverse types of family that should be considered: single parent family, grandparents family, no-parents family, children in orphanages and so on. It pre-assumes that the most normal or, more problematically, normative form of family is children with parents. Second, the term bumonim involves sexism and excludes gender diversity. Bu of bumonim means father and mo means mother, which implies father is first and mother is second. It reveals power relations within the family in terms of sexism. It also excludes sexual and gender minority groups, especially transgenderism and bisexuality as it presumes that marriage between female and male is normative. Moreover, the intersectional framework gives valuable explanation of how power relations can be changed when students have multiple identities. A student who is a Black woman raised by transgender parents would be more marginalised and excluded from a linguistic selection in education than a woman raised by male and female parents. Students who have multiple unprivileged identities would be more neglected in the discourse than the one who has a single identity. In this way, the exploration of the impact of different social categorisations on the selection of words and vice versa provides an additional ground that there are power relations within minorities as well.
Moreover, in the case of South Korea, which tends to be more conservative than other Western countries, exclusion and marginalisation happen not only in terms of selecting exclusive language, but also by not mentioning or ignoring those minority groups in the educational process. It does not provide any opportunity to students to engage in such structural problems, intensifying discrimination against minorities due to their sexual orientation, disability, nationality, or race. While Korean education describes the importance of the equal opportunity of individuals regardless of their identity, it merely focuses on multiculturality and the equality between women and men, while omitting explanation of diverse types of violence faced by other minorities, especially disability and sexual minorities, which indicates power relations withing minorities.
The reluctance to insert diverse types of minorities in the educational process is clearly shown in the “Ethics and Educational Process”, provided by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea (2015). While it succeeded in mentioning human rights, equality between women and men, religion, and multiculturalism, there was mention of sexual orientation and disability in the report, which are also important social categories in the discourse of inclusive education. This reluctance to take in consideration particular types of minorities ultimately leads to institutional barriers to inclusive education by granting the privilege to certain types of minorities and their related language to be discussed on the table. In other words, it signalises the existing cycle in society that social disadvantages and hatreds against them results in the indifference and, vice versa, the latter intensifies the former by pulling the discourse out of collective Interests. The absence of language dedicated to such minorities means intellectual limitations to discover, explore, and solve the problems that minorities face in the educational process.
To create a more inclusive education, Korea should develop educational frameworks so that minorities can represent themselves at local levels, and institutions can reflect their voices in their system. Sue Subbs (2008) introduces the useful method to make two-way communication between individuals and organisations by suggesting three steps. In the first step, it develops a strong framework that will be bones of programs (Stubbs 2008). It consists of core values, beliefs, basic principles and indicators of success to clarify the aims and direction of programs (Stubbs 2008). In this process, it should clearly identify that desirable teaching objectives and learning environments not only consist of behavioural outcomes but also linguistic performances in which every person can find his or her representative . In the second step, it implements those values, beliefs and principles within local cultures with local actors (Stubbs 2008). Local educators will take account of available resources, practical situations and cultural or local contexts (Stubbs 2008). The specialisation of the task in local context links to the importance of employing teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds, gender identities, economic statuses or any other social categories, who have competence to make inclusive education. Lastly, it involves evaluating and training process to monitor and make self-reflection. Because, as indicated above, power relations exist within different minorities, it is important to be flexible in the discourse of diversity. The regular evaluation of the educational process will enable itself to reflect the changing world (Stubbs 2008). Through these three steps, the selection of language and its omission in the education process can be alleviated for inclusive education.
In conclusion, the exclusion of minorities in education appears in the process of selecting terms. Ignoring such minorities by not mentioning them in the discourse is also another form of marginalisation. The symbolic power of language legitimises and consolidates an uncritical belief of certain power relations and leads to actual behaviours in practice. In addition, the intersectional framework explains power relations within minorities by addressing the importance of multiple identities, which would be more unprivileged than a single identity. The exclusion of minority groups in the selection of terms has social effects in terms of marginalisation and exclusion by inventing and intensifying ‘normativeness.’ Linguistic marginalisation and power relations can result in negative behaviours and attitudes of participants in the educational process.
Bibliography
Bešić, E., 2020. Intersectionality: A pathway towards inclusive education? PROSPECTS, 49, pp.111–122.
Bourdieu, P., 1991. Language and symbolic power, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Powers, J.M., Fischman, G. & Tefera, A.A., 2018. The challenges and possibilities of intersectionality in education research, Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
Republic of Korea, Ministry of Education, 2015. Ethics and Educational Process. Available at: https://ceri.knue.ac.kr/pds/2015_07_ethics.pdf
Stubbs, S., 2008. Inclusive Education: Where there are few resources I. Lewis, ed., Oslo, Norway: The Atlas Alliance.