ABSTRACT
In education, culture is often understood as "an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society", and "it operates as a set of assumptions that are unconscious and taken for granted". A meta-cultural approach aims to reveal the pre-existing ontological relationships between cultures that have been predetermined in our own culture, which is thus ideological. Culture as the ontological foundation of being refers to the networked world that connects all different cultural groups and integrates the multiplicity of self into Being. A non-ontological approach to cultures can result in intentional or unintentional exclusion of others by dichotomising between individuals and the world and taking out individuals from the networked world. This dualistic approach can be found in multicultural education concepts such as cultural awareness, cultural differences, and cultural diversity. The existence of metaphysical tensions/conflicts between cultures indicates that the fallacy of reification can occur when cultural phenomena are treated as epistemic objects only.
