2022 Volume 44 Issue 2 Pages 161-166
Since the 2000s, there has been a movement in many countries around the world to reexamine the value of liberal arts within the context of contemporary university education.
In Japan, liberal arts education was introduced to its higher education system as the centerpiece of post-World War II education reform. Under the title of “general education,” it was charged with the mission of fostering “citizens who will lead democratization,” complementing Japanese university education which had been traditionally organized around disciplinary education. However, when formal curricular requirements for general education, that were originally prescribed in the Standards for the Establishment of Universities, were removed in 1991, liberal arts education in Japan began to undergo a transformation, expanding its role to include the cultivation of a wide array of attributes such as judgment, creativity, and problem solving, etc.
The purpose of the roundtable is to highlight the characteristics of Japanese liberal arts education and its contemporary issues through international comparison with liberal education in the United States, Australia, and France where liberal education has taken on unique forms and is continuing to evolve in individual ways. The roundtable consisted of presentations examining the historical context, societal background, current status and future trends of liberal arts education in those four countries followed by a discussion session which focused on sharpening the analytical framework of this comparative study and illuminating areas in need of further investigation.
