A Contemporary Issue of the World: Refugees Solution to a Problem: Educational Needs of Refugees in a Multicultural World

Abstract

In last decades, forced migration movements increased unfortunately and caused a number of people to leave their countries, homes. According to United Nations High Refugee Committee (UNHCR), “65.3 million people forcibly displaced worldwide and if these people were a nation, they would made up 21st largest country in the world” (2016, pp 2,72). Since World War II, this number is highest in the world. In addition there is an important fact that more than 50 per cent of these refugees are younger than 18 years old (UNHCR,2016). All these refugees need to have access to their basic needs. In this context, especially existence and quality of food, health and educational services have importance. Host countries should make plans for these services even refugees are “temporarily protected” because “temporarily” time is unbounded. 1 year can be temporary time for refugees but also 20 year also can be a temporary time. Moreover, refugees may have cultural problems as the time progresses. Cultural problems are very important issues that refugees may face. Due to different cultural dynamic of host countries, refugees culture can be shapen. Multicultural socialization occurs when these type of migration movements exist. Multicultural socialization is the process of acquiring values, cognitions, emotions and behaviors from a different culture through social mechanisms. As stated above 50 per cent of refugees are children (UNHCR,2016). Refugee children are not only need to access humanitarian needs but also education. Getting a good education is every child’s right as stated in Children Rights. According to Children Rights’ 28th article, all governments should give free and compulsory elementary school education to every child and make arrangements to sustain a healthy education life (UNHCR,1990). Refugees also have rights to get proper education. Even though, making a new system or adapting to established system for refugees is sometimes hard for host countries, getting this responsibility is crucial in context of human rights. Turkey is one of the countries that hosts high number of refugees. According to European Comission Eurostate Release, Turkey hosts 3.4 million refugees and Turkey is the first country that hosts number of refugees (2017). From these refugees, 51 per cent of them are children (UNHCR,2016). Considering the fact that there are so many young refugees, education plays an crucial role for adaptation to society and decrease level of language barrier. Education system of Turkey should be arranged according to refugees and should respect their identities. When refugees migrate, a common culture occur in society. This common culture, affect refugees identities. Governments and policy makers should aware that, refugees are not only have their identities but also they probably have host countries identities. Sustainability and combination of different cultural identities are important part of refugee education. To achieve this goal, curriculums for refugee students should be well analyzed and planned based on multiculturalism. In this paper, a multicultural curriculum advice will be given to establish a better education life for Syrian refugees in Turkey.