American Progressive Education and Yutori Kyoiku by Craig Sower (original) (raw)
American Progressive Education and Yutori Kyoiku
2014
Few groups in the history of education have been as influential as the American progressives, who were part of the broader wave of Progressivism that swept the developed world in the late-19th century. It is often seen as an American movement, but its roots lay in the Prussian welfare state. American intellectuals educated in Germany in the 1800s were inspired by the Prussian model of an efficiently organized society under the leadership of experts backed by the power of the state bureaucracy. They returned home imbued with ideas about a paternalistic state, and began to advocate similar changes in the US. Since Japan's yutori kyoiku (education free from pressure) owes more than a passing debt to Progressivism, Japanese teachers should familiarize themselves with the origins of this philosophy. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in Progressivism, but Progressivism is interested in you. This paper will introduce key elements of American progressive education and four men considered its early architects: Stanley Hall, John Dewey, Edward Thorndike, and David Snedden. Their work set the stage for the child-centered movement, educational psychology, and educational sociology. They ushered in "The Age of the Experts," the years just before and after World War I during which the movement's influence grew within academia and the teaching establishment. They used science to justify the differentiated curriculum, empower pedagogical experts, and redefine democracy. From 1910-1950, progressives oversaw a 60% reduction in academic content while "life-adjustment" courses rose tenfold. They de-emphasized reading, put pupils' self-esteem over learning facts or developing good habits, and established an ongoing hegemony over teacher education. Similarly, yutori kyoiku reforms reduced the school week from six days to five, and cut "the educational requirements by a third." In both the US and Japan, academic performance declined significantly.
International Review of Education, 2011
This book welcomes the reader with a cover of Washi-traditional Japanese paper-symbolising fragility and versatility, which underscores the thoughts on recent issues in Japanese education. All of the authors-from Japanese, British and/ or US-American academic backgrounds-are sensitive to the direction of Japan's educational system: either to develop an ''unequally differentiated, exclusive system or an equality-oriented, inclusive system'' (p. 36). The volume is divided into three parts after two introductory chapters. Part I looks at ''Policy, Finance, and National Reform'', Part II focuses on problems of ''Educational Inequalities and Marginalized Groups'' and Part III allows the reader to participate in some ''Reflexions on Forces Affecting the Future of Japanese Education''. The index especially supports readers who are looking for quick information on comparative issues and are not too familiar with the Japanese educational system. This group, but also experts on the topic will deepen their understanding of the complexity of the ''third wave of educational reform'' and the positions of selected marginalised groups in Japan. It is written with readers in mind who must miss out on the Japanese discussion due to language barriers. A wide range of students and scholars in the educational field interested in educational sociology as much as in pedagogical issues will find useful information; but anthropologists and specialists from the diversity management, social psychology and political science fields will also get new input for reflection. This review focuses on the two introductory articles and two of the eleven chapters. June A. Gordon and Gerald LeTendre, specialists on Japanese education and ethnic issues, open with the well-known contradiction between the success of Japanese schools in international tests and the harsh criticism inside Japan and reach out to the complexity of reform and counter-reform of the last 30 years in Japanese education with the question: ''Why … have the political pressures to reform
US-China Education Review 2017(6B).pdf
Submission guidelines and Web submission system are available at The paper analyzes a religion-based college's spiritual education through Buddhist sutra adaptation (BSA) experiences to explore the students' perceptions of good, filial piety, and environmental ethics, as well as their behavioral modifications, accordingly. The BSA is an artistic presentation of singing and signing in the Tzu Chi Missions for moral reflection on desire, anger, and ignorance. The participating students are interviewed and observed for their after-school participation of BSA experiences, and in the context of humanities course performance. This paper intends to highlight a special form of moral education through BSA experiences. For over 200 years, philosophers, psychologists, and neuro-scientists have tried to discern the fundamental components and functions of the human brain. Their efforts have often focused on the ways to enhance cognition.
Education in Japan: testing the limits of asian education
Foro de Educación, 2011
A re-imagining of education is taking place throughout the world with the 21 st century in mind and nowhere is this being tested, probed, and critiqued more than in Asia. This new era sees social phenomena as polycentric and polycontextual rather than bilateral or unidirectional. Asia is first and foremost where education in the 21 st century is seeing its most spectacular engagement and growth. We view the Japanese example with its multiple, textured approaches as one of the heralds of this new global conversation for an education that responds to the transnational, transcultural characteristics of the new age that has dawned upon us. Combining Confucian, North American, European, and global approaches -all of which are having an impact on other nations of Asia -Japan represents the cutting edge of a new wave for understanding education that has movement as a central motif and strategy.
Untold Stories: Using Common Core State Standards to Give Voice to Japanese Americans
The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies, 2017
This article explores the idea of facilitating the use of Common Core State Standards, more specifically, the Comprehensive Instructional Sequence Model (CIS), in the social studies classroom for the purposes of providing students exposure to marginalized topics or those topics that are frequently overlooked in the dominant classroom discourse. Included in the article is a brief exploration of how the author reflects upon teaching marginalized topics in the social studies and suggestions for implementing the CIS Model, as well as a user-friendly handout to facilitate this model. The provided lesson includes a snapshot of the experiences and daily events of Japanese Americans immediately following the Attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Reimagining Modern Education: Contributions from Modern Japanese Philosophy and Practice?
ECNU Review of Education, 2020
Amidst ongoing attempts to think beyond Western frameworks for education, there is a tendency to overlook Japan, perhaps because it appears highly modern. This is striking given that some prominent strands of Japanese philosophy have formulated an explicit and exacting challenge to the core onto-epistemic premises of modern Western thought. It is also surprising because Japanese educational practices have resulted in some of the highest achievement outcomes-both cognitive and noncognitive-found anywhere in the world and inculcate a worldview that is distinct. Herein, we thus attempt to make visible the potential contribution of modern Japanese philosophy by outlining some of the core ideas, then turn to sketch resonances with and responses to other projects outlined in this Special Issue. Our approach is elucidation through relational comparison. Through this process, we suggest that the notion of self-negation as a mode of learning may be helpful in explaining why-at the empirical level-the outlook of Japanese students, and perhaps other East Asian students, diverge markedly from their Western peers. Yet we also find that an attempt, such as ours, to link divergent onto-epistemic thought to alternative empirical hypotheses quickly gives rise to various doubts and discomforts, even among otherwise sympathetic scholars.
Education and social justice in Japan
International Review of Education, 2021
Kaori H. Okano. Routledge, Abingdon/New York, 2021, 234 pp. Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education series. ISBN 978-0-415-83252-6 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-315-81409-4 (eBook)