THE IMPORTANCE OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION IN LEARNING PROCESS

Contemporary tremulous world pluralistic society deals with many problems, including war conflicts, crises, quarrels and currently uncontrolled migration wave coming to Europe. Meeting people of different ethnic groups, cultures and religions arouse increased attention and a number of questions, especially the problems of immigration of newly coming ones into the majority of society. Prejudice, stereotypes and fear of something strange and unknown often lead to misunderstanding and hate. Nowadays, education plays an important role as relationship based on dialogue and cooperation, when esteem, respect and tolerance of all participants are kept, can be built only with the knowledge of all cultural diversities and eliminating those cultural barriers. The author of the paper carried out a research within the Erasmus Teaching Staff Mobility programme in academic years 2014/15 and 2015/16, using a method of questionnaire aiming at mapping of multicultural situation in the German universities of Koblenz and Hof. The research results clearly proved that the goal of current education is the integration of all pupils and students from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds into broader multicultural environment while respecting their personal and cultural identity as well as basic human and civil rights, freedoms and values. The author is aware of the fact that the situation in multicultural Germany has been sharply changing in the frame of nowadays immigration policy. Nevertheless, the results of the research can be used for developing intercultural competence within Czech education,including preparation of eLearning courses, supplementary illustrations or text materials and last but not least as an inspiration for conducting a mutual dialogue. Moreover, the multicultural education is still changing and devoloping. Generally, there is a growth of importance of expanding intercultural competence which includes not only knowledge of foreign language, but also cultural realia, including cultural sensitivity and acceptance of everything strange and unknown.