Abstract
In July 2006, OECD published 'OECD Economic Surveys Japan 2006', which indicated the rise in measured inequality and relative poverty. It also recommended that children in low-income households have adequate access to high-quality education to prevent poverty from being passed on to future generations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the truth of 'adequate access to high-quality education'. This paper emphasizes the notion of 'social capital' as the key concept, in that social capital should relate the process of both a change in the transition system as well as its complex polarization.
Recently, in the developed nations, the new concept of competence is appeared through breaking a youth transition system and polarization of their biographies. This paper takes notice one of that is called 'Key Competency', proposed by DeSeCo Project in OECD. Competence is not the specific ability or skill, but the complex system of actions. Therefore, the learner is requested to have many chances and tries for acts in the learning process. Social capital affects the learning process of Key Competency deeply, because it would make the internal base of participation to learn mediating by the trust, which is an important factor of social capital. Learners who have more social capital tend to participate to school, community, and other informal networks more active, and have advantages on learning competence over others.
Nevertheless, some recent researches in UK suggest us that the inequality of social capital has expanded in the developed nations. The cause and background of this tendency is thought as the structural one, that is progress of knowledge society, Individualization (U. Beck) and so on. I suppose that according to these social changes, for the one hand, middle class families and youth are getting a bigger advantage to make social capitals, and on the other hand working class ones are becoming more disadvantaged.
As the change of the concept of competence, the values of social capital have expanded, and on the contrary, the inequality of social capital has expanded. This is the serious dilemma young people have faced in the process of their transition.
How should we try to solve this dilemma? A plural approach to secure the formation of the capital related to various societies equally might be necessary for that. To put it concretely, at first, we should proceed to largescale economical and cultural equalization, because equality are supposed to promote 'trust' between people. Secondly, in the case of education and learning, we should try to secure equal conditions to politically create social capital, and practically try to make it various, especially among the disadvantaged children and youth to compensate for inequality. Thirdly, we should not unify and standardize the notion of social capital, but try to acknowledge the virtues of its various types.
