5:15 PM - 7:15 PM
[U15-P02] Educating and Learning in Japan – Escaping Multi-waves Post-colonialism
★Invited Papers
Keywords:Post-colonialism, University Education, Japan, Ethics and History of Science
Between the Japanese Nobel Prize Winner who stated that Japanese education and university are a waste of time, and the thesis that is the authority on the subject: "MEXT and the Crisis of Japanese Higher Education" by Brian J. McVeigh (2002), the accounts of education and learning in Japan are hardly depicted in a positive light. Besides the blame-game however, how did we get there in a country where education was arguably more liberal and deployed with better intent than in Western Nations and Europe before the 19th Century?
Indeed, if we look back at the end of the Tokugawa period and the hinge into the Meiji Restoration era, schooling that was originally divided between Samurai and commoners had seen its boundaries blurred and educated people in Japan at the time were in much higher numbers than what the elite education provided in Europe at the same time. One of the striking evidence of this “fair society ideals” was the presence of school for women, even if one must concede that special curriculum had been developed for them. The content of these schools are to better one’s life rather than reaching some chimeric highs.
Unfortunately, this system was wiped off by the forced introduction of Western education, with the need to compete with Western nations (naval, gunnery engineering, etc.), from which Japan almost saw its own survival being dependent on. In a country of Confucian tradition, it did not come without contestations, but this was the unfortunate door Western education used to enter Japan. In other words, what took thousands of years in the making from the Ancient Greek and a heavy layer of Christianity over it in Europe, was entering the country from the gun-barrel. It goes without say that philosophy and ethics did not take the center-stage, if not for Nishida Koutaro and his disciples, who unfortunately were used ideologically to support WW2. After the defeat, this spark bringing together Eastern and Western philosophy was kept under the cap, and the American shut down all research (except the Earthquake Research Centre of Tokyo University), and brought a new curriculum in, adding further American flavor to education and research.
The shortfalls of Japanese education today are not the one of Japanese people nor its government, they are the one of Western education that was forced in as an economic tool for a vassal, stumping down on a local system of ethics, thinking and only feeding the country with technical bribes, expecting that it would only serve. Moreover, the foced introduction of a University system that was not the product of the country’s culture, has lead to a system that is crippled, because it is not adapted to Japanese. Institutions are often pale copies of what they should be as they are trying to resemble their original models. They will never be red-bricks universities, because those don’t withstand earthquake so well anyway.
Unfortunately, this stance has been deserving the country and its students, as far as the Geosciences and all other sciences which are taught at university are concerned.
Indeed, if we look back at the end of the Tokugawa period and the hinge into the Meiji Restoration era, schooling that was originally divided between Samurai and commoners had seen its boundaries blurred and educated people in Japan at the time were in much higher numbers than what the elite education provided in Europe at the same time. One of the striking evidence of this “fair society ideals” was the presence of school for women, even if one must concede that special curriculum had been developed for them. The content of these schools are to better one’s life rather than reaching some chimeric highs.
Unfortunately, this system was wiped off by the forced introduction of Western education, with the need to compete with Western nations (naval, gunnery engineering, etc.), from which Japan almost saw its own survival being dependent on. In a country of Confucian tradition, it did not come without contestations, but this was the unfortunate door Western education used to enter Japan. In other words, what took thousands of years in the making from the Ancient Greek and a heavy layer of Christianity over it in Europe, was entering the country from the gun-barrel. It goes without say that philosophy and ethics did not take the center-stage, if not for Nishida Koutaro and his disciples, who unfortunately were used ideologically to support WW2. After the defeat, this spark bringing together Eastern and Western philosophy was kept under the cap, and the American shut down all research (except the Earthquake Research Centre of Tokyo University), and brought a new curriculum in, adding further American flavor to education and research.
The shortfalls of Japanese education today are not the one of Japanese people nor its government, they are the one of Western education that was forced in as an economic tool for a vassal, stumping down on a local system of ethics, thinking and only feeding the country with technical bribes, expecting that it would only serve. Moreover, the foced introduction of a University system that was not the product of the country’s culture, has lead to a system that is crippled, because it is not adapted to Japanese. Institutions are often pale copies of what they should be as they are trying to resemble their original models. They will never be red-bricks universities, because those don’t withstand earthquake so well anyway.
Unfortunately, this stance has been deserving the country and its students, as far as the Geosciences and all other sciences which are taught at university are concerned.