With the fall of the iron curtain followed by technological development, the world has become a more connected place than ever before.

But as the world strode through the process of “globalization,” the clashes between people with different ideas, cultures and beliefs also intensified.

Jung Eun-hee, founder and chairperson of a New York-based virtual school, said the key to resolving conflicts among different cultures lies in better understanding each other. The process, she added, begins with education.

Using technology to create an environment for students from different countries to communicate and study together could contribute to achieving world peace, she claimed.

“Our goal is to make an international virtual school system in which it is natural for students to study with their counterparts from other cultures,” she said.

This was the objective when she designed International Virtual Elementary/Secondary Classroom Activities, an e-learning program that provides a virtual environment for youngsters across the globe ― from South Korea to the U.S., Bhutan and Mexico ― to share while studying and socializing.

Over the course of a semester, the students would interact with each other via blog posts and Skype calls to explain various aspects of their culture to each other, such as books, games and food.

The 42-year-old former elementary school teacher said the idea for her program came about when she realized that despite undergoing the entire education system, she knew very little about other cultures.

“Korea’s education system fails to provide a chance for students to understand foreign cultures and communicate with foreigners. ... World policy is all regarded as simple study material, failing to garner students’ interest,” Jung said.

This results in students being confined within their own culture. “They view foreigners as if they are aliens, as I once did,” she said.

Due to their poor understanding of other cultures, Korean college students often have trouble working with foreign students. Some 41.3 percent of foreign students said they became a target of racial discrimination during their time here, according to a survey by University-Tomorrow Research Laboratory for the Twenties.

“The traditional way of understanding other cultures ― discussing them with your classmates ― has limits in the sense that it involves people with similar backgrounds,” Jung said, explaining that direct contact with people from other cultures can expand the scope of understanding for students.

Jung said a lack of understanding between cultures can plague those in other countries as well. She pointed to the “axis of evil” remark about North Korea made by former U.S. President George W. Bush, which failed to grasp the complicated nature of the country.

“It appeared that he did not understand the multidimensional relationship between the two Koreas in a way that he just labeled it ‘friend or foe.’ I felt like even a U.S. leader could be making policies without full understanding of a foreign culture,” she said.

Scholars like political scientist Samuel P. Huntington have foretold of clashes between civilizations, since the difference between civilizations are too basic to overcome in a short period of time.

While such a task is not an easy one to accomplish, Jung said the first step can be taken through education. She said “intercultural competence,” the capacity to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures, is critical in the 21st century.

“Accepting various viewpoints on a specific issue allows students to expand one’s scope of thinking. That way, students become more creative and can proactively seek the most effective way ― not being confined by one’s preconceptions,” she said.

While true interaction across cultures had been restricted by distance and cost in the past, technological advances have paved a way for cross-cultural interaction and education, she said. But greater access could mean a greater risk of cultural conflicts, Jung pointed out, which is why education needs to provide a guideline on how to work better with people from other cultures.

Jung also stressed that a greater use of technology in education is necessary. For example, educators should be aware of not getting hung up on the technology itself.

In the past few years, the Korean government has stepped up efforts to adopt smart education by installing infrastructure and distributing gadgets at schools. But experts have raised criticism that the lecture-based teaching method itself remains largely unchanged and that many of the programs focus on just using educational software.

“What is the purpose of education? It is to seek knowledge and to prepare for life,” she said.

“When kids enter society, there will be far different technology than today. The important thing is not to teach existing technologies, but to prepare them for using new tools and gadgets to solve the problems of the future.”

By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)