Abstract
Many school libraries in Japan have been inactive these thirty years. This condition is caused by the teaching methods and accelerated by the preparatory instruction for entrance examinations. Some insist that the education of Japan should be reformed along the lines of that of the United States, the birth-place of school libraries today. But most teachers are not inclined to adopt other ways, and things go better in schools in Japan than the nation as a whole that “is at risk”, as you know. So I will search for an answer by other means: seeking its standing points in society, the educational process, etc.
This time I will analyze education both in its private and public sectors adding the viewpoint of the formation of character. Then, I will attempt to clarify which vocations and roles in society need libraries in the education for them, as also the meanings of reading, listening to and watching recorded messages for growing persons.
The school is a social agency. The total society has developed from gatherer-hunters' to an industrial society through an agricultural one. Other questions arise: what kind of society has schools with a library, who go there and for what purpose?
