2009 Volume 76 Issue 1 Pages 23-32
The purpose of this study is to clarify the development of educational counseling from 1936-1945. Little attention has been given to the substance of activity in the Department of Educational Counseling attached to Tokyo Bunrika University. However, what is important in discussing the expansion of counseling activities is to note the research that members of the department had been doing there. Let us consider the development of educational counseling in this time from three perspectives. First, I present the subject of the Department of Educational Counseling attached to Tokyo Bunrika University. The educational counseling increased in Japan in the late 1930's. This department was established at this time. The characteristic of the department was to give high priority to study. Members of the department took up the following two subjects in counseling activities. For one thing, they discussed the problem of how to cope with modern changes in home life. For another, they addressed the problem of how to satisfy the need for human resources which had been felt in the system of the general mobilization structure. Second, I examine what part educational counseling played in the fiercely competitive entrance examinations. Most clients to the Department of Educational Counseling attached to Tokyo Bunrika University came from the new middle class. The clients came there for advice so that they could have their children take the examination for entrance to the famous elementary school. In this situation, educational counseling played two roles. The one role is to forecast an appropriate course for the child based on intelligence testing. Then, psychologists of the department revised intelligence tests to improve the accuracy of the diagnosis. The other part is to guide parent's perspective on education in the right direction. They criticized the parents obsessed by their own children's entrance exams for individualism, and recommended that their children be brought up to regard social life as important. Third, I consider how to use the research in the Department of Educational Counseling attached to Tokyo Bunrika University. The members of the department were affected by Gestalt psychology, and diagnosed children not only according to intelligence testing, but also according to research of children's growth process and their living environment. The research supported the following two methods to guide parents. First, they treated children individually according to certain factors. For example, they divided factors into hard labor, infant disease and heredity, environment in guidance for the underachiver. In the second place they appealed to parents to take measures to prevent children from trouble because they felt they had discovered the causes for trouble in children's upbringing. Thus they not only diagnosed how to guide exceptional children but led parents in how to raise children who were developing normally.
